Белый Клык / White Fang
They made noises, and at first he was frightened. Then he understood that they were very little, and he became bolder. They moved. He placed his paw on one, and its movements were slowered. This was a source of enjoyment to him. He smelled it. He picked it up in his mouth. It struggled and tickled his tongue. At the same time he felt hunger. His jaws closed together. There was a crunching of small bones, and warm blood ran in his mouth. The taste of it was good. This was meat, the same as his mother gave him, only it was alive between his teeth and therefore better. So he ate all the ptarmigan. Then he licked his chops[24] in quite the same way his mother did, and began to crawl out of the bush.
There, the mother ptarmigan was in a fury and tried to hit him. He became angry. He no longer was afraid of anything. He was fighting. He had just destroyed little live things. He would now destroy a big live thing. He was too busy and happy to know that he was happy.
But he lost the battle with ptarmigan. She pecked on his nose, again and again. A rain of pecks fell on his ill-used nose. So he released his prey, turned tail and made an inglorious retreat. But, while he was lying in the bush, he saw a terrible hawk that caught the mother-ptarmigan and carried it away.
Live things were meat. They were good to eat. Also, live things when they were large enough, could give hurt. It was better to eat small live things like ptarmigan chicks, and to let alone large live things like ptarmigan hens.
He came down a bank to the stream. He had never seen water before. The surface looked good. He stepped boldly out on it; and went down, crying with fear, into the embrace of the unknown. It was cold, and he gasped, breathing quickly. The water rushed into his lungs instead of the air. Like every animal of the Wild, he had the instinct of death. To him it was the greatest of hurts.
He came to the surface, and the sweet air rushed into his open mouth. He did not go down again. He fought frantically, going under water from time to time, but finally he reached the bank. He crawled from the water and lied down. He had learned some more about the world. Water was not alive. Yet it moved. Also, it looked as stable as the earth, but was without any stability at all. His conclusion was that things were not always what they seemed to be.
One other adventure was destined for him that day. He had remembered that there was such a thing in the world as his mother. And then there came to him a feeling that he wanted her more than all the rest of the things in the world. Not only his body and brain were tired with the adventure. So he started out to look for the cave and his mother, feeling lonely and helpless.
He was going through some bushes, when he heard a sharp cry. He saw a weasel leaping away from him. It was a small live thing, and he had no fear. Then, before him, at his feet, he saw an extremely small live thing, only several inches long, a young weasel, that, like himself, had disobediently gone out on an adventure. He turned it over with his paw. It made a strange noise. The next moment he received a sharp blow on the side of the neck and felt the sharp teeth of the mother-weasel cut into his flesh.
Then the mother-weasel leaped upon her young one and disappeared with it. The cut of her teeth in his neck still hurt, but his feelings hurt more.
He was still whimpering when the mother-weasel reappeared. She approached cautiously, and the cub had full opportunity to observe her lean, snakelike body. She came closer and closer. The next moment she was at his throat, her teeth deep in his hair and flesh.
At first he snarled and tried to fight; but he was very young, and this was only his first day in the world, and his snarl became a whimper, his fight—a struggle to escape. The weasel never relaxed her hold. She hung on, trying to press the great vein with her teeth. The weasel was a drinker of blood.
The grey cub would have died, and there would have been no story to write about him, had not the she-wolf come through the bushes. Then her jaws closed on the lean, yellow body, and the weasel knew death between the crunching teeth.
His mother’s joy at finding him seemed even greater than his joy at being found. She caressed him and licked the cuts made in him by the weasel’s teeth. Then they ate the blood-drinker, and after that went back to the cave and slept.
Chapter V. THE LAW OF MEAT
The cub’s development was rapid. He rested for two days, and then went out from the cave again. But on this trip he did not get lost. When he grew tired, he found his way back to the cave and slept. And every day after that he was ranging a wider area.
He began to understand his strength and his weakness, and to know when to be bold and when to be cautious.
He never forgot and was always ready to revenge the hurts by the ptarmigan and or the weasel. He studied their habits.
In the matter of meat, his luck had been all in the beginning. The seven ptarmigan chicks and—later—the baby weasel were the sum of his killings. His desire to kill strengthened with the days. He wanted a squirrel. But as birds flew in the air, squirrels could climb trees, and the cub could only try to crawl upon the squirrel when it was on the ground.
The cub had a great respect for his mother. She could get meat, and she never failed to bring him his share. She was unafraid of things. His mother represented power; besides, the older he grew the shorter grew her temper.
Once his mother brought strange meat. He didn’t know it was a lynx’s kitten, nor did he know the desperateness of what his mother did. He only knew it was meat.
With a full stomach, the cub lay in the cave, sleeping against his mother’s side. He was woken by her snarling. Possibly in her whole life it was the most terrible snarl she ever gave. There was reason for it, and none knew it better than she. In the afternoon light, crouching in the entrance of the cave, the cub saw the lynx-mother. He bristled.
Because of the low-roofed entrance the lynx could not go in, and, when she tried to, the she-wolf sprang upon her and threw her down. The cub saw little of the battle. There was an awful snarling. The two animals fought, the lynx ripping and tearing with her claws and using her teeth as well, while the she-wolf used only her teeth.
Once, the cub sprang in and sank his teeth into the hind leg of the lynx. He clung on, growling savagely, and thus probably saved his mother. The lynx’s huge fore-paw ripped his shoulder open to the bone. The fight lasted so long that he had time to cry himself out and to experience a second burst of courage; and in the end he was again clinging to a hind-leg and furiously growling between his teeth.
The lynx was dead. But the she-wolf was very weak and sick. For a week she never left the cave, except for water, and then her movements were slow and painful. At the end of that time they ate the lynx, while the she-wolf’s wounds had healed.
The cub’s shoulder was stiff and sore. But the world now seemed changed. He now had greater confidence. He had fought; he had buried his teeth in the flesh of an enemy; and he had survived. And because of all this, he carried himself more boldly.
He began to accompany his mother on the meat-trail, and he saw much of the killing of meat and began to play his part in it. And he learned the law of meat. There were two kinds of life—his own kind and the other kind. His own kind included his mother and himself. The other kind included all live things that moved. But the other kind was divided. One portion was composed of the non-killers and the small killers. The other portion killed and ate his own kind, or was killed and eaten by his own kind. And out of this classification came the law. The aim of life was meat. Life itself was meat. Life lived on life. There were the eaters and those who were the eaten. The law was: EAT OR BE EATEN. He did not formulate the law; he merely lived the law without thinking about it at all.
He saw the law operating around him on every side. He had eaten the ptarmigan chicks. The hawk had eaten the ptarmigan-mother. The hawk would also have eaten him. Later, when he had grown, he wanted to eat the hawk. He had eaten the lynx kitten. The lynx-mother would have eaten him had she not herself been killed and eaten. And so it went.
The cub did not think in man-fashion. He was single-purposed, and had but one thought or desire at a time. Besides the law of meat, there were other and lesser laws for him to learn and obey. The world was filled with surprise. The life that was in him, the play of his muscles, was happiness. To run down[25] meat was to experience happiness. His battles were pleasures. Terror itself, and the mystery of the unknown, led to his living.
And there were satisfactions. To have a full stomach, to lay lazily in the sunshine—such things were remuneration. They were expressions of life, and life is always happy when it is expressing itself. So the cub had no quarrel with his hostile environment. He was very much alive, very happy, and very proud of himself.
Part III
Chapter I. THE MAKERS OF FIRE
The cub came upon it suddenly. It was his own fault. He had been careless. He had woken up, left the cave and run down to the stream to drink.
Before him, sitting silently on their haunches, were five live things. He had never seen such before. It was his first look at mankind. But at the sight of him the five men did not spring to their feet, nor show their teeth, nor snarl. They did not move.
Nor did the cub move. Every instinct of his nature told him to run away, but there was another instinct. He felt his own weakness. Here was mastery and power, something far and away beyond him.
The cub had never seen man, but he recognized in man the animal that had fought itself to primacy over the other animals of the Wild. With the eyes of all his ancestors was the cub now looking upon man. He felt the fear and the respect and the experience of the generations. Had he been full-grown, he would have run away. But now he lied down in a paralysis of fear.
One of the Indians walked over to him. The cub cowered closer to the ground. It was the unknown, in concrete flesh and blood, bending over him and reaching down to seize him. His hair bristled involuntarily; his lips wrinkled and his little fangs were bared. The man’s hand hesitated and he spoke laughing, “Wabam wabisca ip pit tah.” (“Look! The white fangs!”)
The other Indians laughed loudly, and asked the man on to pick up the cub. As the hand descended closer and closer, there was within the cub a battle of the instincts. He wanted to surrender and to fight. He did both. He surrendered till the hand almost touched him. Then he fought, and his teeth sank into the hand. The next moment he received a hit on the head. Then his puppyhood and the instinct of obedience mastered him. He sat up and cried. But the man whose hand he had bitten was angry. The cub received a hit on the other side of his head—and ‘ki-yi’d’ louder than ever.
The four Indians laughed more loudly, and even the man who had been bitten began to laugh. They surrounded the cub and laughed at him, while he cried with terror and his hurt. Then he heard something. The Indians heard it too. But the cub knew what it was. In his last, long cry there was more triumph than grief. He stopped crying and waited for the coming of his mother, of his ferocious and invincible mother who fought and killed all things and was never afraid. She had heard the cry of her cub and was running to save him.
The man-animals went back several steps. The she-wolf stood over against her cub, facing the men.
Then one of the men cried: “Kiche!”
It was an exclamation of surprise. The cub felt his mother wilting at the sound.
“Kiche!” the man cried again, this time with sharpness and authority.
And then the cub saw his mother, the she-wolf, the fearless one, crouching down till her belly touched the ground. The cub could not understand, but thought that his instinct had been true. His mother verified it. She, too, demonstrated obedience to the man-animals.
The man came over to her. He put his hand upon her head, and she only crouched closer. The other men came up, and surrounded her, and touched her, and she was glad. They were greatly excited, and made many noises with their mouths. These noises were not indication of danger, the cub decided.
“It is not strange,” an Indian was saying. “Her father was a wolf. It is true, her mother was a dog; but did not my brother tie her out in the woods all of three nights in the mating season[26]? The father of Kiche was a wolf.”
“It is a year, Grey Beaver, since she ran away,” spoke a second Indian.
“It is not strange, Salmon Tongue,” Grey Beaver answered. “It was the time of hunger, and there was no meat for the dogs.”
“She has lived with the wolves,” said a third Indian.
“So it seems, Three Eagles,” Grey Beaver answered, laying his hand on the cub; “and this is the sign of it. It is plain that his mother is Kiche. But his father was a wolf. In him there is little dog and much wolf. His fangs are white, and White Fang shall be his name. I have spoken. He is my dog. For was not Kiche my brother’s dog? And is not my brother dead?”
The cub, who had thus received a name in the world, lay and watched. Then Grey Beaver tied the she-wolf to the tree with a stick-bondage. White Fang followed and lied down beside her.
Salmon Tongue’s hand rolled him over on his back. Kiche looked on anxiously. The hand rubbed his stomach in a playful way. It was a position of such helplessness that White Fang’s whole nature protested against it. He could do nothing to defend himself. He was to know fear many times in his dealing with man; yet it was a sign of the fearless companionship with man.
After a time, White Fang heard strange noises. A few minutes later the remainder of the tribe came. There were more men and many women and children, forty of them. Also there were many dogs.
White Fang had never seen dogs before, but at sight of them he felt that they were his own kind, only somehow different. But they displayed little difference from the wolf when they discovered the cub and his mother. There was a rush. White Fang bristled and snarled in the face of the dogs, and went down and under them, feeling the sharp teeth in his body, himself biting and tearing at the legs and bellies above him. He could hear the snarl of Kiche as she fought for him; and he could hear the cries of the man-animals, the sound of clubs beating upon bodies, and the cries of pain from the dogs.
The men drove the dogs back and saved him from the savage teeth of his kind that somehow was not his kind. He thought the men had some unusual, astonishing, unnatural, god-like power (though, of course, he didn’t know anything about gods).
And White Fang licked his hurts and meditated upon his first taste of pack-cruelty and his introduction to the pack. He had never dreamed that his own kind consisted of more than One Eye, his mother, and himself. Here he had discovered many more creatures apparently of his own kind.
Of the bondage he had known nothing before, too. And he didn’t like it when the man-animals went on; for a tiny man-animal took the other end of a stick the she-wolf had been tied to, and led her behind him, and behind her followed White Fang, greatly worried by this new adventure.
They went down the valley of the stream, until they came to the end of the valley, where the stream ran into the Mackenzie River. Here a camp was made; and White Fang looked on with wondering eyes. The superiority of these man-an- imals increased with every moment. But greater than everything else seemed to the wolf-cub their power over things not alive. They made tepees, and canoes, and could dry fish.
At first tepees frightened him. He saw the women and children passing in and out of them without harm, and he saw the dogs trying often to get into them, and being driven away with sharp words and flying stones. After a time, he left Kiche’s side and crawled cautiously toward the wall of the nearest tepee. It was the curiosity of growth that made him move. At last his nose touched the canvas. He waited. Nothing happened. Then he smelled the strange fabric, saturated with the man-smell. He closed on the canvas with his teeth and gave a gentle tug. Nothing happened. He tugged harder. There was a greater movement. It was delightful. He tugged still harder, until the whole tepee was in motion. Then he heard a sharp woman’s cry from inside and ran back to Kiche. But after that he was afraid no more.
A moment later he was running away again from his mother. Her stick was tied to a stake in the ground and she could not follow him. A part-grown puppy, somewhat larger and older than he, came toward him slowly, with some importance. The puppy’s name, as White Fang afterward heard, was Lip-lip. He had lived his life in camp and had fought many puppy fights. Three times, four times, and half a dozen times, his sharp little teeth scored on the newcomer, until White Fang, crying shamelessly, fled to the protection of his mother. It was the first of the many fights he was to have with Lip-lip, for they were enemies from the start.
Kiche licked White Fang soothingly with her tongue, and tried to make him remain with her. But several minutes later he was looking for a new adventure. He came upon one of the man-animals, Grey Beaver, who was rubbing his hams and doing something with sticks and dry moss spread before him on the ground. White Fang came near to him and watched.
Women and children were carrying more sticks and branches to Grey Beaver. White Fang came in until he touched Grey Beaver’s knee, so curious was he. Suddenly he saw a strange thing like mist beginning to arise from the sticks and moss. Then there appeared a live moving thing, of the colour of the sun in the sky. White Fang knew nothing about fire. It drew him, as the light in the mouth of the cave had drawn him in his early puppyhood. Then his nose touched the flame, and at the same instant his little tongue went out to it.
For a moment he was paralysed. The unknown, lurking in the midst of the sticks and moss, was savagely holding him by the nose. He jumped backward, with an astonished explosion of ki-yi’s. At the sound, Kiche leaped snarling to the end of her stick, but could not come to his aid. But Grey Beaver laughed loudly, and then everybody was laughing. But White Fang sat on his haunches and ki-yi’d and ki-yi’d, a forgotten little figure among the man-animals.
It was the worst hurt he had ever known. Both nose and tongue had been hurt by the live thing, sun-coloured, that had grown up under Grey Beaver’s hands. He cried and cried, and every new squeal was met by bursts of laughter. He tried to soothe his nose with his tongue, but the tongue was burnt too, and the two hurts coming together produced greater hurt; so he cried more hopelessly and helplessly than ever.
And he felt shame that the man-animals were laughing at him. He turned and fled away, not from the hurt of the fire, but from the laughter that sank even deeper, and hurt in the spirit of him. And he fled to Kiche, the one creature in the world who was not laughing at him.
Night came on, and White Fang lay by his mother’s side. His nose and tongue still hurt, but there was a greater trouble. He was homesick. He felt a need for the stream and their cave. Life had become too populous. There were so many of the man-animals, men, women, and children. And there were the dogs. The calm loneliness of the only life he had known was gone.
He watched the man-animals coming and going and moving about the camp.
They were fire-makers! They were gods.
Chapter II. THE BONDAGE
During the time that Kiche was tied by the stick, White Fang ran about over all the camp. He quickly came to know much about the man- animals. It was easy to believe they were gods. As his mother, Kiche, had showed her loyalty to them at the first cry of her name, so he was beginning to render his loyalty. When they walked, he got out of their way. When they called, he came. When they commanded him to go, he went away. For behind any wish of theirs was power to enforce that wish, power that hurt, power that expressed itself hits and clubs, in flying stones and whips.
He belonged to them as all dogs belonged to them. Such was the lesson that he learnt in the camp. It came hard. It was a placing of his destiny in another’s hands.
But it did not all happen in a day, this giving over of himself, body and soul, to the man- animals. There were days when he went to the edge of the forest and stood and listened to something calling him far and away. And always he returned, restless and uncomfortable, to whimper softly and wistfully at Kiche’s side and to lick her face with eager, questioning tongue.
White Fang learned rapidly the ways of the camp. He knew the injustice and greediness of the older dogs when meat or fish was thrown out to be eaten. He knew that men were fairer, children crueller, and women kinder.
But the problem of his life was Lip-lip. Larger, older, and stronger, Lip-lip had selected White Fang for his special object of persecution. White Fang fought willingly enough, but his enemy was too big. Lip-lip became a nightmare to him.
But, though he was always defeated, his spirit remained unbroken. Yet a bad effect was produced. He became angry and morose. His temper had been savage by birth, but it became more savage under this persecution. The playful, puppyish side of him found little expression. He never played with the other puppies of the camp. Lip-lip did not let him to.
White Fang was robbed of much of his puppyhood and made older than his age. Having no outlet of his energies through play, he developed his mental processes. He became cunning. As he could not get his share of meat and fish when a general feed was given to the camp-dogs, he became a clever thief.
And, as Kiche, when she was with the wolves, had brought out to destruction the dogs from the camps of men, so White Fang brought Lip-lip into Kiche’s jaws. Lip-lip, excited by the chase, forgot caution and ran into Kiche lying at the end of her stick. She was tied, but he could not get away from her easily.
When at last he succeeded in rolling clear of her, he crawled to his feet, badly hurt both in body and in spirit. White Fang sank his teeth into his hind leg. He ran away shamelessly.
There came the day when Grey Beaver released Kiche. White Fang was delighted with his mother’s freedom. He accompanied her joyfully about the camp; and, as he remained close by her side, Lip-lip kept a respectful distance.
Later on that day, Kiche and White Fang strayed into the edge of the woods next to the camp. He had led his mother there, step by step, and now, when she stopped, he tried to call her farther. The stream, the lair, and the quiet woods were calling to him, and he wanted her to come. He ran on a few steps, stopped, and looked back. She did not move. He whined pleadingly, and jumped playfully in and out of the underbrush. He ran back to her, licked her face, and ran on again. And still she did not move. She turned her head and looked back at the camp.
There was something calling to him out there in the open. His mother heard it too. But she heard also the call of the fire and of man, the call which has been given—of all animals—to the wolf and the wild-dog, who are brothers.
Kiche turned and slowly trotted back toward camp. Stronger than the physical bondage was the clutch of the camp upon her. White Fang sat down in the shadow of a tree and whimpered softly. There were wood smells reminding him of his old life of freedom. But he was still only a part-grown puppy, and stronger than the call either of man or of the Wild was the call of his mother. All his short life he had depended upon her. The time has not yet come for independence. So he trotted back to camp, pausing once, and twice, to sit down and whimper and to listen to the call that still sounded in his ears.
In the Wild the time of a mother with her cub is short; but under the dominion of man it is sometimes even shorter. Grey Beaver was in the debt of Three Eagles. Three Eagles was going away on a trip up the Mackenzie to the Great Slave Lake. A piece of cloth, a bearskin, twenty cartridges, and Kiche, went to pay the debt. White Fang saw his mother taken aboard Three Eagles’ canoe, and tried to follow her. A blow from Three Eagles knocked him backward to the land. The canoe sailed off. He sprang into the water and swam after it, deaf to the sharp cries of Grey Beaver to return. White Fang ignored even a man-animal, a god, such was the terror of losing his mother.