White Fang

PART
 
4 
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C
HAPTER 
1.
 
T
HE 
E
NEMY 
O
F 
H
IS 
K
IND
 
Had there been in White Fang’s nature any possibility, no matter how 
remote, of his ever coming to fraternise with his kind, such possibility was 
irretrievably destroyed when he was made leader of the sled-team. For now 
the dogs hated him—hated him for the extra meat bestowed upon him by 
Mit-sah; hated him for all the real and fancied favours he received; hated 
him for that he fled always at the head of the team, his waving brush of a tail 
and his perpetually retreating hind-quarters for ever maddening their eyes. 
And White Fang just as bitterly hated them back. Being sled-leader was 
anything but gratifying to him. To be compelled to run away before the 
yelling pack, every dog of which, for three years, he had thrashed and 
mastered, was almost more than he could endure. But endure it he must, or 
perish, and the life that was in him had no desire to perish out. The moment 
Mit-sah gave his order for the start, that moment the whole team, with 
eager, savage cries, sprang forward at White Fang. 
There was no defence for him. If he turned upon them, Mit-sah would 
throw the stinging lash of the whip into his face. Only remained to him to 
run away. He could not encounter that howling horde with his tail and hind-
quarters. These were scarcely fit weapons with which to meet the many 
merciless fangs. So run away he did, violating his own nature and pride with 
every leap he made, and leaping all day long. 
One cannot violate the promptings of one’s nature without having that 
nature recoil upon itself. Such a recoil is like that of a hair, made to grow out 
from the body, turning unnaturally upon the direction of its growth and 
growing into the body—a rankling, festering thing of hurt. And so with 
White Fang. Every urge of his being impelled him to spring upon the pack 
that cried at his heels, but it was the will of the gods that this should not be; 
and behind the will, to enforce it, was the whip of cariboo-gut with its biting 
thirty-foot lash. So White Fang could only eat his heart in bitterness and 
develop a hatred and malice commensurate with the ferocity and 
indomitability of his nature. 
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If ever a creature was the enemy of its kind, White Fang was that 
creature. He asked no quarter, gave none. He was continually marred and 
scarred by the teeth of the pack, and as continually he left his own marks 
upon the pack. Unlike most leaders, who, when camp was made and the 
dogs were unhitched, huddled near to the gods for protection, White Fang 
disdained such protection. He walked boldly about the camp, inflicting 
punishment in the night for what he had suffered in the day. In the time 
before he was made leader of the team, the pack had learned to get out of 
his way. But now it was different. Excited by the day-long pursuit of him, 
swayed subconsciously by the insistent iteration on their brains of the sight 
of him fleeing away, mastered by the feeling of mastery enjoyed all day, the 
dogs could not bring themselves to give way to him. When he appeared 
amongst them, there was always a squabble. His progress was marked by 
snarl and snap and growl. The very atmosphere he breathed was 
surcharged with hatred and malice, and this but served to increase the 
hatred and malice within him. 
When Mit-sah cried out his command for the team to stop, White Fang 
obeyed. At first this caused trouble for the other dogs. All of them would 
spring upon the hated leader only to find the tables turned. Behind him 
would be Mit-sah, the great whip singing in his hand. So the dogs came to 
understand that when the team stopped by order, White Fang was to be let 
alone. But when White Fang stopped without orders, then it was allowed 
them to spring upon him and destroy him if they could. After several 
experiences, White Fang never stopped without orders. He learned 
quickly. It was in the nature of things, that he must learn quickly if he were 
to survive the unusually severe conditions under which life was vouchsafed 
him. 
But the dogs could never learn the lesson to leave him alone in camp. Each 
day, pursuing him and crying defiance at him, the lesson of the previous 
night was erased, and that night would have to be learned over again, to be 
as immediately forgotten. Besides, there was a greater consistence in their 
dislike of him. They sensed between themselves and him a difference of 
kind—cause sufficient in itself for hostility. Like him, they were 
domesticated wolves. But they had been domesticated for 
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generations. Much of the Wild had been lost, so that to them the Wild was 
the unknown, the terrible, the ever-menacing and ever warring. But to him, 
in appearance and action and impulse, still clung the Wild. He symbolised it, 
was its personification: so that when they showed their teeth to him they 
were defending themselves against the powers of destruction that lurked in 
the shadows of the forest and in the dark beyond the camp-fire. 
But there was one lesson the dogs did learn, and that was to keep 
together. White Fang was too terrible for any of them to face single-
handed. They met him with the mass-formation, otherwise he would have 
killed them, one by one, in a night. As it was, he never had a chance to kill 
them. He might roll a dog off its feet, but the pack would be upon him 
before he could follow up and deliver the deadly throat-stroke. At the first 
hint of conflict, the whole team drew together and faced him. The dogs had 
quarrels among themselves, but these were forgotten when trouble was 
brewing with White Fang. 
On the other hand, try as they would, they could not kill White Fang. He was 
too quick for them, too formidable, too wise. He avoided tight places and 
always backed out of it when they bade fair to surround him. While, as for 
getting him off his feet, there was no dog among them capable of doing the 
trick. His feet clung to the earth with the same tenacity that he clung to 
life. For that matter, life and footing were synonymous in this unending 
warfare with the pack, and none knew it better than White Fang. 
So he became the enemy of his kind, domesticated wolves that they were, 
softened by the fires of man, weakened in the sheltering shadow of man’s 
strength. White Fang was bitter and implacable. The clay of him was so 
moulded. He declared a vendetta against all dogs. And so terribly did he 
live this vendetta that Grey Beaver, fierce savage himself, could not but 
marvel at White Fang’s ferocity. Never, he swore, had there been the like of 
this animal; and the Indians in strange villages swore likewise when they 
considered the tale of his killings amongst their dogs. 
When White Fang was nearly five years old, Grey Beaver took him on 
another great journey, and long remembered was the havoc he worked 
amongst the dogs of the many villages along the Mackenzie, across the 
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Rockies, and down the Porcupine to the Yukon. He revelled in the 
vengeance he wreaked upon his kind. They were ordinary, unsuspecting 
dogs. They were not prepared for his swiftness and directness, for his 
attack without warning. They did not know him for what he was, a 
lightning-flash of slaughter. They bristled up to him, stiff-legged and 
challenging, while he, wasting no time on elaborate preliminaries, snapping 
into action like a steel spring, was at their throats and destroying them 
before they knew what was happening and while they were yet in the 
throes of surprise. 
He became an adept at fighting. He economised. He never wasted his 
strength, never tussled. He was in too quickly for that, and, if he missed, 
was out again too quickly. The dislike of the wolf for close quarters was his 
to an unusual degree. He could not endure a prolonged contact with 
another body. It smacked of danger. It made him frantic. He must be away, 
free, on his own legs, touching no living thing. It was the Wild still clinging 
to him, asserting itself through him. This feeling had been accentuated by 
the Ishmaelite life he had led from his puppyhood. Danger lurked in 
contacts. It was the trap, ever the trap, the fear of it lurking deep in the life 
of him, woven into the fibre of him. 
In consequence, the strange dogs he encountered had no chance against 
him. He eluded their fangs. He got them, or got away, himself untouched in 
either event. In the natural course of things there were exceptions to 
this. There were times when several dogs, pitching on to him, punished him 
before he could get away; and there were times when a single dog scored 
deeply on him. But these were accidents. In the main, so efficient a fighter 
had he become, he went his way unscathed. 
Another advantage he possessed was that of correctly judging time and 
distance. Not that he did this consciously, however. He did not calculate 
such things. It was all automatic. His eyes saw correctly, and the nerves 
carried the vision correctly to his brain. The parts of him were better 
adjusted than those of the average dog. They worked together more 
smoothly and steadily. His was a better, far better, nervous, mental, and 
muscular co-ordination. When his eyes conveyed to his brain the moving 
image of an action, his brain without conscious effort, knew the space that 
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limited that action and the time required for its completion. Thus, he could 
avoid the leap of another dog, or the drive of its fangs, and at the same 
moment could seize the infinitesimal fraction of time in which to deliver his 
own attack. Body and brain, his was a more perfected mechanism. Not that 
he was to be praised for it. Nature had been more generous to him than to 
the average animal, that was all. 
It was in the summer that White Fang arrived at Fort Yukon. Grey Beaver 
had crossed the great watershed between Mackenzie and the Yukon in the 
late winter, and spent the spring in hunting among the western outlying 
spurs of the Rockies. Then, after the break-up of the ice on the Porcupine, 
he had built a canoe and paddled down that stream to where it effected its 
junction with the Yukon just under the Artic circle. Here stood the old 
Hudson’s Bay Company fort; and here were many Indians, much food, and 
unprecedented excitement. It was the summer of 1898, and thousands of 
gold-hunters were going up the Yukon to Dawson and the Klondike. Still 
hundreds of miles from their goal, nevertheless many of them had been on 
the way for a year, and the least any of them had travelled to get that far 
was five thousand miles, while some had come from the other side of the 
world. 
Here Grey Beaver stopped. A whisper of the gold-rush had reached his ears, 
and he had come with several bales of furs, and another of gut-sewn 
mittens and moccasins. He would not have ventured so long a trip had he 
not expected generous profits. But what he had expected was nothing to 
what he realised. His wildest dreams had not exceeded a hundred per cent. 
profit; he made a thousand per cent. And like a true Indian, he settled down 
to trade carefully and slowly, even if it took all summer and the rest of the 
winter to dispose of his goods. 
It was at Fort Yukon that White Fang saw his first white men. As compared 
with the Indians he had known, they were to him another race of beings, a 
race of superior gods. They impressed him as possessing superior power, 
and it is on power that godhead rests. White Fang did not reason it out, did 
not in his mind make the sharp generalisation that the white gods were 
more powerful. It was a feeling, nothing more, and yet none the less 
potent. As, in his puppyhood, the looming bulks of the tepees, man-reared, 
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had affected him as manifestations of power, so was he affected now by the 
houses and the huge fort all of massive logs. Here was power. Those white 
gods were strong. They possessed greater mastery over matter than the 
gods he had known, most powerful among which was Grey Beaver. And yet 
Grey Beaver was as a child-god among these white-skinned ones. 
To be sure, White Fang only felt these things. He was not conscious of 
them. Yet it is upon feeling, more often than thinking, that animals act; and 
every act White Fang now performed was based upon the feeling that the 
white men were the superior gods. In the first place he was very suspicious 
of them. There was no telling what unknown terrors were theirs, what 
unknown hurts they could administer. He was curious to observe them, 
fearful of being noticed by them. For the first few hours he was content 
with slinking around and watching them from a safe distance. Then he saw 
that no harm befell the dogs that were near to them, and he came in closer. 
In turn he was an object of great curiosity to them. His wolfish appearance 
caught their eyes at once, and they pointed him out to one another. This act 
of pointing put White Fang on his guard, and when they tried to approach 
him he showed his teeth and backed away. Not one succeeded in laying a 
hand on him, and it was well that they did not. 
White Fang soon learned that very few of these gods—not more than a 
dozen—lived at this place. Every two or three days a steamer (another and 
colossal manifestation of power) came into the bank and stopped for 
several hours. The white men came from off these steamers and went away 
on them again. There seemed untold numbers of these white men. In the 
first day or so, he saw more of them than he had seen Indians in all his life; 
and as the days went by they continued to come up the river, stop, and then 
go on up the river out of sight. 
But if the white gods were all-powerful, their dogs did not amount to 
much. This White Fang quickly discovered by mixing with those that came 
ashore with their masters. They were irregular shapes and sizes. Some 
were short-legged—too short; others were long-legged—too long. They 
had hair instead of fur, and a few had very little hair at that. And none of 
them knew how to fight. 
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As an enemy of his kind, it was in White Fang’s province to fight with 
them. This he did, and he quickly achieved for them a mighty 
contempt. They were soft and helpless, made much noise, and floundered 
around clumsily trying to accomplish by main strength what he 
accomplished by dexterity and cunning. They rushed bellowing at him. He 
sprang to the side. They did not know what had become of him; and in that 
moment he struck them on the shoulder, rolling them off their feet and 
delivering his stroke at the throat. 
Sometimes this stroke was successful, and a stricken dog rolled in the dirt, 
to be pounced upon and torn to pieces by the pack of Indian dogs that 
waited. White Fang was wise. He had long since learned that the gods were 
made angry when their dogs were killed. The white men were no exception 
to this. So he was content, when he had overthrown and slashed wide the 
throat of one of their dogs, to drop back and let the pack go in and do the 
cruel finishing work. It was then that the white men rushed in, visiting their 
wrath heavily on the pack, while White Fang went free. He would stand off 
at a little distance and look on, while stones, clubs, axes, and all sorts of 
weapons fell upon his fellows. White Fang was very wise. 
But his fellows grew wise in their own way; and in this White Fang grew wise 
with them. They learned that it was when a steamer first tied to the bank 
that they had their fun. After the first two or three strange dogs had been 
downed and destroyed, the white men hustled their own animals back on 
board and wrecked savage vengeance on the offenders. One white man, 
having seen his dog, a setter, torn to pieces before his eyes, drew a 
revolver. He fired rapidly, six times, and six of the pack lay dead or dying—
another manifestation of power that sank deep into White Fang’s 
consciousness. 
White Fang enjoyed it all. He did not love his kind, and he was shrewd 
enough to escape hurt himself. At first, the killing of the white men’s dogs 
had been a diversion. After a time it became his occupation. There was no 
work for him to do. Grey Beaver was busy trading and getting wealthy. So 
White Fang hung around the landing with the disreputable gang of Indian 
dogs, waiting for steamers. With the arrival of a steamer the fun 
began. After a few minutes, by the time the white men had got over their 
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surprise, the gang scattered. The fun was over until the next steamer 
should arrive. 
But it can scarcely be said that White Fang was a member of the gang. He 
did not mingle with it, but remained aloof, always himself, and was even 
feared by it. It is true, he worked with it. He picked the quarrel with the 
strange dog while the gang waited. And when he had overthrown the 
strange dog the gang went in to finish it. But it is equally true that he then 
withdrew, leaving the gang to receive the punishment of the outraged gods. 
It did not require much exertion to pick these quarrels. All he had to do, 
when the strange dogs came ashore, was to show himself. When they saw 
him they rushed for him. It was their instinct. He was the Wild—the 
unknown, the terrible, the ever-menacing, the thing that prowled in the 
darkness around the fires of the primeval world when they, cowering close 
to the fires, were reshaping their instincts, learning to fear the Wild out of 
which they had come, and which they had deserted and 
betrayed. Generation by generation, down all the generations, had this fear 
of the Wild been stamped into their natures. For centuries the Wild had 
stood for terror and destruction. And during all this time free licence had 
been theirs, from their masters, to kill the things of the Wild. In doing this 
they had protected both themselves and the gods whose companionship 
they shared. 
And so, fresh from the soft southern world, these dogs, trotting down the 
gang-plank and out upon the Yukon shore had but to see White Fang to 
experience the irresistible impulse to rush upon him and destroy him. They 
might be town-reared dogs, but the instinctive fear of the Wild was theirs 
just the same. Not alone with their own eyes did they see the wolfish 
creature in the clear light of day, standing before them. They saw him with 
the eyes of their ancestors, and by their inherited memory they knew White 
Fang for the wolf, and they remembered the ancient feud. 
All of which served to make White Fang’s days enjoyable. If the sight of him 
drove these strange dogs upon him, so much the better for him, so much 
the worse for them. They looked upon him as legitimate prey, and as 
legitimate prey he looked upon them. 
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Not for nothing had he first seen the light of day in a lonely lair and fought 
his first fights with the ptarmigan, the weasel, and the lynx. And not for 
nothing had his puppyhood been made bitter by the persecution of Lip-lip 
and the whole puppy pack. It might have been otherwise, and he would 
then have been otherwise. Had Lip-lip not existed, he would have passed 
his puppyhood with the other puppies and grown up more doglike and with 
more liking for dogs. Had Grey Beaver possessed the plummet of affection 
and love, he might have sounded the deeps of White Fang’s nature and 
brought up to the surface all manner of kindly qualities. But these things 
had not been so. The clay of White Fang had been moulded until he became 
what he was, morose and lonely, unloving and ferocious, the enemy of all 
his kind. 
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