oblong box.

In advance of the dogs, on wide
snowshoes, toiled a man. At the rear of the
sled toiled a second man. On the sled, in the
box, lay a third man whose toil was over, a
man whom the Wild had conquered and
beaten down until he would never move nor
struggle again. It is not the way of the Wild to
like movement. Life is an offence to it, for
life is movement; and the Wild aims always
to destroy movement. It freezes the water to
prevent it running to the sea; it drives the
sap out of the trees till they are frozen to
their mighty hearts; and most ferociously
and terribly of all does the Wild harry and
crush into submission man man who is the
most restless of life, ever in revolt against
the dictum that all movement must in the end
come to the cessation of movement.

But at front and rear, unawed and
indomitable, toiled the two men who were
not yet dead. Their bodies were covered
with fur and soft-tanned leather. Eyelashes
and cheeks and lips were so coated with
the crystals from their frozen breath that
their faces were not discernible. This gave
them the seeming of ghostly masques,
undertakers in a spectral world at the
funeral of some ghost. But under it all they
were men, penetrating the land of
desolation and mockery and silence, puny
adventurers bent on colossal adventure,
pitting themselves against the might of a
world as remote and alien and pulseless as
the abysses of space.

They travelled on without speech, saving
their breath for the work of their bodies. On
every side was the silence, pressing upon
them with a tangible presence. It affected
their minds as the many atmospheres of
deep water affect the body of the diver. It
crushed them with the weight of unending
vastness and unalterable decree. It crushed

into a cluster of spruce trees on the edge of
the waterway and made a camp. The coffin,
at the side of the fire, served for seat and
table. The wolf-dogs, clustered on the far
side of the fire, snarled and bickered
among themselves, but evinced no
inclination to stray off into the darkness.

"Seems to me, Henry, they're stayin'
remarkable close to camp," Bill
commented.

Henry, squatting over the fire and settling
the pot of coffee with a piece of ice,
nodded. Nor did he speak till he had taken
his seat on the coffin and begun to eat.

"They know where their hides is safe," he
said. "They'd sooner eat grub than be grub.
They're pretty wise, them dogs."

Bill shook his head. "Oh, I don't know."

His comrade looked at him curiously. "First
time I ever heard you say anything about
their not bein' wise."

"Henry," said the other, munching with
deliberation the beans he was eating, "did
you happen to notice the way them dogs
kicked up when I was a-feedin' 'em?"

"They did cut up more'n usual," Henry
acknowledged.

"How many dogs 've we got, Henry?"

"Six."

"Well, Henry . . . " Bill stopped for a moment,
in order that his words might gain greater
significance. "As I was sayin', Henry, we've
got six dogs. I took six fish out of the bag. I
gave one fish to each dog, an', Henry, I was
one fish short."

A long wailing cry, fiercely sad, from
somewhere in the darkness, had
interrupted him. He stopped to listen to it,
then he finished his sentence with a wave of
his hand toward the sound of the cry, " one
of them?"

Bill nodded. "I'd a blame sight sooner think
that than anything else. You noticed yourself
the row the dogs made."

Cry after cry, and answering cries, were
turning the silence into a bedlam. From
every side the cries arose, and the dogs
betrayed their fear by huddling together and
so close to the fire that their hair was
scorched by the heat. Bill threw on more
wood, before lighting his pipe.

"I'm thinking you're down in the mouth
some," Henry said.

"Henry . . . " He sucked meditatively at his
pipe for some time before he went on.
"Henry, I was a-thinkin' what a blame sight
luckier he is than you an' me'll ever be."

He indicated the third person by a
downward thrust of the thumb to the box on
which they sat.

"You an' me, Henry, when we die, we'll be
lucky if we get enough stones over our
carcases to keep the dogs off of us."

"But we ain't got people an' money an' all
the rest, like him," Henry rejoined. "Long-
distance funerals is somethin' you an' me
can't exactly afford."

"What gets me, Henry, is what a chap like
this, that's a lord or something in his own
country, and that's never had to bother
about grub nor blankets; why he comes a-
buttin' round the Godforsaken ends of the
earth that's what I can't exactly see."

He shook his fist angrily at the gleaming
eyes, and began securely to prop his
moccasins before the fire.

"An' I wisht this cold snap'd break," he went
on. "It's ben fifty below for two weeks now.
An' I wisht I'd never started on this trip,
Henry. I don't like the looks of it. I don't feel
right, somehow. An' while I'm wishin', I
wisht the trip was over an' done with, an'
you an' me a-sittin' by the fire in Fort
McGurry just about now an' playing
cribbage that's what I wisht."

Henry grunted and crawled into bed. As he
dozed off he was aroused by his comrade's
voice.

"Say, Henry, that other one that come in an'
got a fish why didn't the dogs pitch into it?
That's what's botherin' me."

"You're botherin' too much, Bill," came the
sleepy response. "You was never like this
before. You jes' shut up now, an' go to
sleep, an' you'll be all hunkydory in the
mornin'. Your stomach's sour, that's what's
botherin' you."

The men slept, breathing heavily, side by
side, under the one covering. The fire died
down, and the gleaming eyes drew closer
the circle they had flung about the camp.
The dogs clustered together in fear, now
and again snarling menacingly as a pair of
eyes drew close. Once their uproar became
so loud that Bill woke up. He got out of bed
carefully, so as not to disturb the sleep of his
comrade, and threw more wood on the fire.
As it began to flame up, the circle of eyes
drew farther back. He glanced casually at
the huddling dogs. He rubbed his eyes and
looked at them more sharply. Then he
crawled back into the blankets.

"Henry," he said. "Oh, Henry."

"But no fool dog ought to be fool enough to
go off an' commit suicide that way." He
looked over the remainder of the team with
a speculative eye that summed up instantly
the salient traits of each animal. "I bet none
of the others would do it."

"Couldn't drive 'em away from the fire with
a club," Bill agreed. "I always did think there
was somethin' wrong with Fatty anyway."

And this was the epitaph of a dead dog on
the Northland trail less scant than the
epitaph of many another dog, of many a
man.

Chapter 2 The She-Wolf

Breakfast eaten and the slim camp-outfit
lashed to the sled, the men turned their
backs on the cheery fire and launched out
into the darkness. At once began to rise the
cries that were fiercely sad cries that called
through the darkness and cold to one
another and answered back. Conversation
ceased. Daylight came at nine o'clock. At
midday the sky to the south warmed to rose-
colour, and marked where the bulge of the
earth intervened between the meridian sun
and the northern world. But the rose-colour
swiftly faded. The grey light of day that
remained lasted until three o'clock, when it,
too, faded, and the pall of the Arctic night
descended upon the lone and silent land.

As darkness came on, the hunting-cries to
right and left and rear drew closer so close
that more than once they sent surges of fear
through the toiling dogs, throwing them into
short-lived panics.

At the conclusion of one such panic, when
he and Henry had got the dogs back in the
traces, Bill said:

"I wisht they'd strike game somewheres,

they sat on in silence, Henry staring at the
fire, and Bill at the circle of eyes that burned
in the darkness just beyond the firelight.

"I wisht we was pullin' into McGurry right
now," he began again.

"Shut up your wishin' and your croakin',"
Henry burst out angrily. "Your stomach's
sour. That's what's ailin' you. Swallow a
spoonful of sody, an' you'll sweeten up
wonderful an' be more pleasant company."

In the morning Henry was aroused by fervid
blasphemy that proceeded from the mouth
of Bill. Henry propped himself up on an
elbow and looked to see his comrade
standing among the dogs beside the
replenished fire, his arms raised in
objurgation, his face distorted with
passion.

"Hello!" Henry called. "What's up now?"

"Frog's gone," came the answer.

"No."

"I tell you yes."

Henry leaped out of the blankets and to the
dogs. He counted them with care, and then
joined his partner in cursing the power of
the Wild that had robbed them of another
dog.

"Frog was the strongest dog of the bunch,"
Bill pronounced finally.

"An' he was no fool dog neither," Henry
added.

And so was recorded the second epitaph in
two days.

A gloomy breakfast was eaten, and the four

Henry remarked at bed time, indicating the
gleaming circle that hemmed them in. "If we
could put a couple of shots into 'em, they'd
be more respectful. They come closer every
night. Get the firelight out of your eyes an'
look hard there! Did you see that one?"

For some time the two men amused
themselves with watching the movement of
vague forms on the edge of the firelight. By
looking closely and steadily at where a pair
of eyes burned in the darkness, the form of
the animal would slowly take shape. They
could even see these forms move at times.

A sound among the dogs attracted the
men's attention. One Ear was uttering
quick, eager whines, lunging at the length of
his stick toward the darkness, and desisting
now and again in order to make frantic
attacks on the stick with his teeth.

"Look at that, Bill," Henry whispered.

Full into the firelight, with a stealthy,
sidelong movement, glided a doglike
animal. It moved with commingled mistrust
and daring, cautiously observing the men,
its attention fixed on the dogs. One Ear
strained the full length of the stick toward the
intruder and whined with eagerness.

"That fool One Ear don't seem scairt much,"
Bill said in a low tone.

"It's a she-wolf," Henry whispered back,
"an' that accounts for Fatty an' Frog. She's
the decoy for the pack. She draws out the
dog an' then all the rest pitches in an' eats
'm up."

The fire crackled. A log fell apart with a loud
spluttering noise. At the sound of it the
strange animal leaped back into the
darkness.

anything," Henry told him, as he routed him
out for breakfast. "I hadn't the heart to rouse
you."

Bill began to eat sleepily. He noticed that his
cup was empty and started to reach for the
pot. But the pot was beyond arm's length
and beside Henry.

"Say, Henry," he chided gently, "ain't you
forgot somethin'?"

Henry looked about with great carefulness
and shook his head. Bill held up the empty
cup.

"You don't get no coffee," Henry
announced.

"Ain't run out?" Bill asked anxiously.

"Nope."

"Ain't thinkin' it'll hurt my digestion?"

"Nope."

A flush of angry blood pervaded Bill's face.

"Then it's jes' warm an' anxious I am to be
hearin' you explain yourself," he said.

"Spanker's gone," Henry answered.

Without haste, with the air of one resigned to
misfortune Bill turned his head, and from
where he sat counted the dogs.

"How'd it happen?" he asked apathetically.

Henry shrugged his shoulders. "Don't know.
Unless One Ear gnawed 'm loose. He
couldn't a-done it himself, that's sure."

"The darned cuss." Bill spoke gravely and
slowly, with no hint of the anger that was

"They ate 'm hide an' all," Bill announced.
"The stick's as clean as a whistle. They've
ate the leather offen both ends. They're
damn hungry, Henry, an' they'll have you an'
me guessin' before this trip's over."

Henry laughed defiantly. "I ain't been trailed
this way by wolves before, but I've gone
through a whole lot worse an' kept my
health. Takes more'n a handful of them
pesky critters to do for yours truly, Bill, my
son."

"I don't know, I don't know," Bill muttered
ominously.

"Well, you'll know all right when we pull into
McGurry."

"I ain't feelin' special enthusiastic," Bill
persisted.

"You're off colour, that's what's the matter
with you," Henry dogmatised. "What you
need is quinine, an' I'm goin' to dose you up
stiff as soon as we make McGurry."

Bill grunted his disagreement with the
diagnosis, and lapsed into silence. The day
was like all the days. Light came at nine
o'clock. At twelve o'clock the southern
horizon was warmed by the unseen sun;
and then began the cold grey of afternoon
that would merge, three hours later, into
night.

It was just after the sun's futile effort to
appear, that Bill slipped the rifle from under
the sled-lashings and said:

"You keep right on, Henry, I'm goin' to see
what I can see."

"You'd better stick by the sled," his partner
protested. "You've only got three cartridges,
an' there's no tellin' what might happen."

The dogs had laid down in the snow, and he
walked past them to join his partner in the
sled. Together they watched the strange
animal that had pursued them for days and
that had already accomplished the
destruction of half their dog-team.

After a searching scrutiny, the animal trotted
forward a few steps. This it repeated
several times, till it was a short hundred
yards away. It paused, head up, close by a
clump of spruce trees, and with sight and
scent studied the outfit of the watching men.
It looked at them in a strangely wistful way,
after the manner of a dog; but in its
wistfulness there was none of the dog
affection. It was a wistfulness bred of
hunger, as cruel as its own fangs, as
merciless as the frost itself.

It was large for a wolf, its gaunt frame
advertising the lines of an animal that was
among the largest of its kind.

"Stands pretty close to two feet an' a half at
the shoulders," Henry commented. "An' I'll
bet it ain't far from five feet long."

"Kind of strange colour for a wolf," was
Bill's criticism. "I never seen a red wolf
before. Looks almost cinnamon to me."

The animal was certainly not cinnamon-
coloured. Its coat was the true wolf-coat.
The dominant colour was grey, and yet
there was to it a faint reddish hue a hue that
was baffling, that appeared and
disappeared, that was more like an illusion
of the vision, now grey, distinctly grey, and
again giving hints and glints of a vague
redness of colour not classifiable in terms
of ordinary experience.

"Looks for all the world like a big husky sled-
dog," Bill said. "I wouldn't be s'prised to see
it wag its tail."

partner admonished. "If that pack ever starts
to jump you, them three cartridges'd be
wuth no more'n three whoops in hell. Them
animals is damn hungry, an' once they start
in, they'll sure get you, Bill."

They camped early that night. Three dogs
could not drag the sled so fast nor for so
long hours as could six, and they were
showing unmistakable signs of playing out.
And the men went early to bed, Bill first
seeing to it that the dogs were tied out of
gnawing reach of one another.

But the wolves were growing bolder, and
the men were aroused more than once from
their sleep. So near did the wolves
approach, that the dogs became frantic
with terror, and it was necessary to
replenish the fire from time to time in order
to keep the adventurous marauders at safer
distance.

"I've hearn sailors talk of sharks followin' a
ship," Bill remarked, as he crawled back
into the blankets after one such replenishing
of the fire. "Well, them wolves is land sharks.
They know their business better'n we do,
an' they ain't a-holdin' our trail this way for
their health. They're goin' to get us. They're
sure goin' to get us, Henry."

"They've half got you a'ready, a-talkin' like
that," Henry retorted sharply. "A man's half
licked when he says he is. An' you're half
eaten from the way you're goin' on about it."

"They've got away with better men than you
an' me," Bill answered.

"Oh, shet up your croakin'. You make me all-
fired tired."

Henry rolled over angrily on his side, but
was surprised that Bill made no similar
display of temper. This was not Bill's way,

He tried to sniff noses with her, but she
retreated playfully and coyly. Every advance
on his part was accompanied by a
corresponding retreat on her part. Step by
step she was luring him away from the
security of his human companionship.
Once, as though a warning had in vague
ways flitted through his intelligence, he
turned his head and looked back at the
overturned sled, at his team-mates, and at
the two men who were calling to him.

But whatever idea was forming in his mind,
was dissipated by the she-wolf, who
advanced upon him, sniffed noses with him
for a fleeting instant, and then resumed her
coy retreat before his renewed advances.

In the meantime, Bill had bethought himself
of the rifle. But it was jammed beneath the
overturned sled, and by the time Henry had
helped him to right the load, One Ear and
the she-wolf were too close together and
the distance too great to risk a shot.

Too late One Ear learned his mistake.
Before they saw the cause, the two men
saw him turn and start to run back toward
them. Then, approaching at right angles to
the trail and cutting off his retreat they saw a
dozen wolves, lean and grey, bounding
across the snow. On the instant, the she-
wolf's coyness and playfulness
disappeared. With a snarl she sprang upon
One Ear. He thrust her off with his shoulder,
and, his retreat cut off and still intent on
regaining the sled, he altered his course in
an attempt to circle around to it. More
wolves were appearing every moment and
joining in the chase. The she-wolf was one
leap behind One Ear and holding her own.

"Where are you goin'?" Henry suddenly
demanded, laying his hand on his partner's
arm.

Silence settled down again over the lonely
land.

He sat for a long while upon the sled. There
was no need for him to go and see what had
happened. He knew it as though it had
taken place before his eyes. Once, he
roused with a start and hastily got the axe
out from underneath the lashings. But for
some time longer he sat and brooded, the
two remaining dogs crouching and
trembling at his feet.

At last he arose in a weary manner, as
though all the resilience had gone out of his
body, and proceeded to fasten the dogs to
the sled. He passed a rope over his
shoulder, a man-trace, and pulled with the
dogs. He did not go far. At the first hint of
darkness he hastened to make a camp, and
he saw to it that he had a generous supply of
firewood. He fed the dogs, cooked and ate
his supper, and made his bed close to the
fire.

But he was not destined to enjoy that bed.
Before his eyes closed the wolves had
drawn too near for safety. It no longer
required an effort of the vision to see them.
They were all about him and the fire, in a
narrow circle, and he could see them plainly
in the firelight lying down, sitting up,
crawling forward on their bellies, or slinking
back and forth. They even slept. Here and
there he could see one curled up in the snow
like a dog, taking the sleep that was now
denied himself.

He kept the fire brightly blazing, for he knew
that it alone intervened between the flesh of
his body and their hungry fangs. His two
dogs stayed close by him, one on either
side, leaning against him for protection,
crying and whimpering, and at times
snarling desperately when a wolf
approached a little closer than usual. At

sides showing the udulating ribs with every
movement. They were very lean, mere skin-
bags stretched over bony frames, with
strings for muscles so lean that Henry found
it in his mind to marvel that they still kept
their feet and did not collapse forthright in
the snow.

He did not dare travel until dark. At midday,
not only did the sun warm the southern
horizon, but it even thrust its upper rim, pale
and golden, above the sky-line. He
received it as a sign. The days were
growing longer. The sun was returning. But
scarcely had the cheer of its light departed,
than he went into camp. There were still
several hours of grey daylight and sombre
twilight, and he utilised them in chopping an
enormous supply of fire-wood.

With night came horror. Not only were the
starving wolves growing bolder, but lack of
sleep was telling upon Henry. He dozed
despite himself, crouching by the fire, the
blankets about his shoulders, the axe
between his knees, and on either side a
dog pressing close against him. He awoke
once and saw in front of him, not a dozen
feet away, a big grey wolf, one of the
largest of the pack. And even as he looked,
the brute deliberately stretched himself after
the manner of a lazy dog, yawning full in his
face and looking upon him with a
possessive eye, as if, in truth, he were
merely a delayed meal that was soon to be
eaten.

This certitude was shown by the whole
pack. Fully a score he could count, staring
hungrily at him or calmly sleeping in the
snow. They reminded him of children
gathered about a spread table and awaiting
permission to begin to eat. And he was the
food they were to eat! He wondered how
and when the meal would begin.

fingers had closed on the missile, she
sprang back into safety; and he knew that
she was used to having things thrown at her.
She had snarled as she sprang away,
baring her white fangs to their roots, all her
wistfulness vanishing, being replaced by a
carnivorous malignity that made him
shudder. He glanced at the hand that held
the brand, noticing the cunning delicacy of
the fingers that gripped it, how they
adjusted themselves to all the inequalities
of the surface, curling over and under and
about the rough wood, and one little finger,
too close to the burning portion of the brand,
sensitively and automatically writhing back
from the hurtful heat to a cooler gripping-
place; and in the same instant he seemed to
see a vision of those same sensitive and
delicate fingers being crushed and torn by
the white teeth of the she-wolf. Never had
he been so fond of this body of his as now
when his tenure of it was so precarious.

All night, with burning brands, he fought off
the hungry pack. When he dozed despite
himself, the whimpering and snarling of the
dogs aroused him. Morning came, but for
the first time the light of day failed to scatter
the wolves. The man waited in vain for them
to go. They remained in a circle about him
and his fire, displaying an arrogance of
possession that shook his courage born of
the morning light.

He made one desperate attempt to pull out
on the trail. But the moment he left the
protection of the fire, the boldest wolf
leaped for him, but leaped short. He saved
himself by springing back, the jaws
snapping together a scant six inches from
his thigh. The rest of the pack was now up
and surging upon him, and a throwing of
firebrands right and left was necessary to
drive them back to a respectful distance.

Even in the daylight he did not dare leave

listen and laugh at the futile efforts of the
wolves to get in. And then, so strange was
the dream, there was a crash. The door was
burst open. He could see the wolves
flooding into the big living-room of the fort.
They were leaping straight for him and the
Factor. With the bursting open of the door,
the noise of their howling had increased
tremendously. This howling now bothered
him. His dream was merging into
something else he knew not what; but
through it all, following him, persisted the
howling.

And then he awoke to find the howling real.
There was a great snarling and yelping. The
wolves were rushing him. They were all
about him and upon him. The teeth of one
had closed upon his arm. Instinctively he
leaped into the fire, and as he leaped, he
felt the sharp slash of teeth that tore through
the flesh of his leg. Then began a fire fight.
His stout mittens temporarily protected his
hands, and he scooped live coals into the
air in all directions, until the campfire took
on the semblance of a volcano.

But it could not last long. His face was
blistering in the heat, his eyebrows and
lashes were singed off, and the heat was
becoming unbearable to his feet. With a
flaming brand in each hand, he sprang to
the edge of the fire. The wolves had been
driven back. On every side, wherever the
live coals had fallen, the snow was sizzling,
and every little while a retiring wolf, with wild
leap and snort and snarl, announced that
one such live coal had been stepped upon.

Flinging his brands at the nearest of his
enemies, the man thrust his smouldering
mittens into the snow and stamped about to
cool his feet. His two dogs were missing,
and he well knew that they had served as a
course in the protracted meal which had
begun days before with Fatty, the last

forward from the hips. His shoulders,
relaxed and drooping, and his head on his
knees advertised that he had given up the
struggle. Now and again he raised his head
to note the dying down of the fire. The circle
of flame and coals was breaking into
segments with openings in between. These
openings grew in size, the segments
diminished.

"I guess you can come an' get me any time,"
he mumbled. "Anyway, I'm goin' to sleep."

Once he awakened, and in an opening in
the circle, directly in front of him, he saw the
she-wolf gazing at him.

Again he awakened, a little later, though it
seemed hours to him. A mysterious change
had taken place so mysterious a change
that he was shocked wider awake.
Something had happened. He could not
understand at first. Then he discovered it.
The wolves were gone. Remained only the
trampled snow to show how closely they
had pressed him. Sleep was welling up and
gripping him again, his head was sinking
down upon his knees, when he roused with
a sudden start.

There were cries of men, and churn of
sleds, the creaking of harnesses, and the
eager whimpering of straining dogs. Four
sleds pulled in from the river bed to the
camp among the trees. Half a dozen men
were about the man who crouched in the
centre of the dying fire. They were shaking
and prodding him into consciousness. He
looked at them like a drunken man and
maundered in strange, sleepy speech.

"Red she-wolf. . . . Come in with the dogs at
feedin' time. . . . First she ate the dog-food.
. . . Then she ate the dogs. . . . An' after that
she ate Bill. . . . "

fangs when they ambitiously tried to pass
him. And it was he who increased the pace
when he sighted the she-wolf, now trotting
slowly across the snow.

She dropped in alongside by him, as though
it were her appointed position, and took the
pace of the pack. He did not snarl at her, nor
show his teeth, when any leap of hers
chanced to put her in advance of him. On the
contrary, he seemed kindly disposed
toward her too kindly to suit her, for he was
prone to run near to her, and when he ran
too near it was she who snarled and
showed her teeth. Nor was she above
slashing his shoulder sharply on occasion.
At such times he betrayed no anger. He
merely sprang to the side and ran stiffly
ahead for several awkward leaps, in
carriage and conduct resembling an
abashed country swain.

This was his one trouble in the running of the
pack; but she had other troubles. On her
other side ran a gaunt old wolf, grizzled and
marked with the scars of many battles. He
ran always on her right side. The fact that he
had but one eye, and that the left eye, might
account for this. He, also, was addicted to
crowding her, to veering toward her till his
scarred muzzle touched her body, or
shoulder, or neck. As with the running mate
on the left, she repelled these attentions
with her teeth; but when both bestowed their
attentions at the same time she was roughly
jostled, being compelled, with quick snaps
to either side, to drive both lovers away and
at the same time to maintain her forward
leap with the pack and see the way of her
feet before her. At such times her running
mates flashed their teeth and growled
threateningly across at each other. They
might have fought, but even wooing and its
rivalry waited upon the more pressing
hunger-need of the pack.

hunger. It ran below its ordinary speed. At
the rear limped the weak members, the very
young and the very old. At the front were the
strongest. Yet all were more like skeletons
than full-bodied wolves. Nevertheless, with
the exception of the ones that limped, the
movements of the animals were eftortless
and tireless. Their stringy muscles seemed
founts of inexhaustible energy. Behind
every steel-like contraction of a muscle, lay
another steel-like contraction, and another,
and another, apparently without end.

They ran many miles that day. They ran
through the night. And the next day found
them still running. They were running over
the surface of a world frozen and dead. No
life stirred. They alone moved through the
vast inertness. They alone were alive, and
they sought for other things that were alive in
order that they might devour them and
continue to live.

They crossed low divides and ranged a
dozen small streams in a lower-lying
country before their quest was rewarded.
Then they came upon moose. It was a big
bull they first found. Here was meat and life,
and it was guarded by no mysterious fires
nor flying missiles of flame. Splay hoofs and
palmated antlers they knew, and they flung
their customary patience and caution to the
wind. It was a brief fight and fierce. The big
bull was beset on every side. He ripped
them open or split their skulls with shrewdly
driven blows of his great hoofs. He crushed
them and broke them on his large horns. He
stamped them into the snow under him in
the wallowing struggle. But he was
foredoomed, and he went down with the
she-wolf tearing savagely at his throat, and
with other teeth fixed everywhere upon him,
devouring him alive, before ever his last
struggles ceased or his last damage had
been wrought.

ambitious in his fierceness. He caught the
one-eyed elder on his blind side and ripped
his ear into ribbons. Though the grizzled old
fellow could see only on one side, against
the youth and vigour of the other he brought
into play the wisdom of long years of
experience. His lost eye and his scarred
muzzle bore evidence to the nature of his
experience. He had survived too many
battles to be in doubt for a moment about
what to do.

The battle began fairly, but it did not end
fairly. There was no telling what the
outcome would have been, for the third wolf
joined the elder, and together, old leader
and young leader, they attacked the
ambitious three-year-old and proceeded to
destroy him. He was beset on either side by
the merciless fangs of his erstwhile
comrades. Forgotten were the days they
had hunted together, the game they had
pulled down, the famine they had suffered.
That business was a thing of the past. The
business of love was at hand ever a sterner
and crueller business than that of food-
getting.

And in the meanwhile, the she-wolf, the
cause of it all, sat down contentedly on her
haunches and watched. She was even
pleased. This was her day and it came not
often when manes bristled, and fang smote
fang or ripped and tore the yielding flesh, all
for the possession of her.

And in the business of love the three-year-
old, who had made this his first adventure
upon it, yielded up his life. On either side of
his body stood his two rivals. They were
gazing at the she wolf, who sat smiling in
the snow. But the elder leader was wise,
very wise, in love even as in battle. The
younger leader turned his head to lick a
wound on his shoulder. The curve of his
neck was turned toward his rival. With his

neck and shoulders involuntarily bristled,
while he half crouched for a spring, his
claws spasmodically clutching into the
snow-surface for firmer footing. But it was
all forgotten the next moment, as he sprang
after the she-wolf, who was coyly leading
him a chase through the woods.

After that they ran side by side, like good
friends who have come to an
understanding. The days passed by, and
they kept together, hunting their meat and
killing and eating it in common. After a time
the she-wolf began to grow restless. She
seemed to be searching for something that
she could not find. The hollows under fallen
trees seemed to attract her, and she spent
much time nosing about among the larger
snow-piled crevices in the rocks and in the
caves of overhanging banks. Old One Eye
was not interested at all, but he followed her
good-naturedly in her quest, and when her
investigations in particular places were
unusually protracted, he would lie down and
wait until she was ready to go on.

They did not remain in one place, but
travelled across country until they regained
the Mackenzie River, down which they
slowly went, leaving it often to hunt game
along the small streams that entered it, but
always returning to it again. Sometimes
they chanced upon other wolves, usually in
pairs; but there was no friendliness of
intercourse displayed on either side, no
gladness at meeting, no desire to return to
the pack-formation. Several times they
encountered solitary wolves. These were
always males, and they were pressingly
insistent on joining with One Eye and his
mate. This he resented, and when she
stood shoulder to shoulder with him,
bristling and showing her teeth, the aspiring
solitary ones would back off, turn-tail, and
continue on their lonely way.

that fire, to be squabbling with the dogs,
and to be avoiding and dodging the
stumbling feet of men.

One Eye moved impatiently beside her; her
unrest came back upon her, and she knew
again her pressing need to find the thing for
which she searched. She turned and trotted
back into the forest, to the great relief of
One Eye, who trotted a little to the fore until
they were well within the shelter of the trees.

As they slid along, noiseless as shadows,
in the moonlight, they came upon a run-way.
Both noses went down to the footprints in
the snow. These footprints were very fresh.
One Eye ran ahead cautiously, his mate at
his heels. The broad pads of their feet were
spread wide and in contact with the snow
were like velvet. One Eye caught sight of a
dim movement of white in the midst of the
white. His sliding gait had been deceptively
swift, but it was as nothing to the speed at
which he now ran. Before him was
bounding the faint patch of white he had
discovered.

They were running along a narrow alley
flanked on either side by a growth of young
spruce. Through the trees the mouth of the
alley could be seen, opening out on a
moonlit glade. Old One Eye was rapidly
overhauling the fleeing shape of white.
Bound by bound he gained. Now he was
upon it. One leap more and his teeth would
be sinking into it. But that leap was never
made. High in the air, and straight up,
soared the shape of white, now a struggling
snowshoe rabbit that leaped and bounded,
executing a fantastic dance there above
him in the air and never once returning to
earth.

One Eye sprang back with a snort of
sudden fright, then shrank down to the snow
and crouched, snarling threats at this thing

again sprang for the rabbit. As he sank
back with it between his teeth, he kept his
eye on the sapling. As before, it followed
him back to earth. He crouched down under
the impending blow, his hair bristling, but
his teeth still keeping tight hold of the rabbit.
But the blow did not fall. The sapling
remained bent above him. When he moved it
moved, and he growled at it through his
clenched jaws; when he remained still, it
remained still, and he concluded it was
safer to continue remaining still. Yet the
warm blood of the rabbit tasted good in his
mouth.

It was his mate who relieved him from the
quandary in which he found himself. She
took the rabbit from him, and while the
sapling swayed and teetered threateningly
above her she calmly gnawed off the
rabbit's head. At once the sapling shot up,
and after that gave no more trouble,
remaining in the decorous and
perpendicular position in which nature had
intended it to grow. Then, between them,
the she-wolf and One Eye devoured the
game which the mysterious sapling had
caught for them.

There were other run-ways and alleys
where rabbits were hanging in the air, and
the wolf-pair prospected them all, the she-
wolf leading the way, old One Eye following
and observant, learning the method of
robbing snares a knowledge destined to
stand him in good stead in the days to
come.

Chapter 2 The Lair

For two days the she-wolf and One Eye
hung about the Indian camp. He was
worried and apprehensive, yet the camp
lured his mate and she was loath to depart.
But when, one morning, the air was rent
with the report of a rifle close at hand, and a

higher in a little round chamber nearly six
feet in diameter. The roof barely cleared her
head. It was dry and cosey. She inspected it
with painstaking care, while One Eye, who
had returned, stood in the entrance and
patiently watched her. She dropped her
head, with her nose to the ground and
directed toward a point near to her closely
bunched feet, and around this point she
circled several times; then, with a tired sigh
that was almost a grunt, she curled her body
in, relaxed her legs, and dropped down, her
head toward the entrance. One Eye, with
pointed, interested ears, laughed at her,
and beyond, outlined against the white light,
she could see the brush of his tail waving
good-naturedly. Her own ears, with a
snuggling movement, laid their sharp points
backward and down against the head for a
moment, while her mouth opened and her
tongue lolled peaceably out, and in this way
she expressed that she was pleased and
satisfied.

One Eye was hungry. Though he lay down in
the entrance and slept, his sleep was fitful.
He kept awaking and cocking his ears at
the bright world without, where the April sun
was blazing across the snow. When he
dozed, upon his ears would steal the faint
whispers of hidden trickles of running
water, and he would rouse and listen
intently. The sun had come back, and all the
awakening Northland world was calling to
him. Life was stirring. The feel of spring
was in the air, the feel of growing life under
the snow, of sap ascending in the trees, of
buds bursting the shackles of the frost.

He cast anxious glances at his mate, but
she showed no desire to get up. He looked
outside, and half a dozen snow-birds
fluttered across his field of vision. He
started to get up, then looked back to his
mate again, and settled down and dozed. A
shrill and minute singing stole upon his

between her legs against the length of her
body, five strange little bundles of life, very
feeble, very helpless, making tiny
whimpering noises, with eyes that did not
open to the light. He was surprised. It was
not the first time in his long and successful
life that this thing had happened. It had
happened many times, yet each time it was
as fresh a surprise as ever to him.

His mate looked at him anxiously. Every little
while she emitted a low growl, and at times,
when it seemed to her he approached too
near, the growl shot up in her throat to a
sharp snarl. Of her own experience she had
no memory of the thing happening; but in
her instinct, which was the experience of all
the mothers of wolves, there lurked a
memory of fathers that had eaten their new-
born and helpless progeny. It manifested
itself as a fear strong within her, that made
her prevent One Eye from more closely
inspecting the cubs he had fathered.

But there was no danger. Old One Eye was
feeling the urge of an impulse, that was, in
turn, an instinct that had come down to him
from all the fathers of wolves. He did not
question it, nor puzzle over it. It was there, in
the fibre of his being; and it was the most
natural thing in the world that he should obey
it by turning his back on his new-born family
and by trotting out and away on the meat-
trail whereby he lived.

Five or six miles from the lair, the stream
divided, its forks going off among the
mountains at a right angle. Here, leading up
the left fork, he came upon a fresh track. He
smelled it and found it so recent that he
crouched swiftly, and looked in the direction
in which it disappeared. Then he turned
deliberately and took the right fork. The
footprint was much larger than the one his
own feet made, and he knew that in the
wake of such a trail there was little meat for

find meat. In the afternoon he blundered
upon a ptarmigan. He came out of a thicket
and found himself face to face with the
slow-witted bird. It was sitting on a log, not
a foot beyond the end of his nose. Each
saw the other. The bird made a startled rise,
but he struck it with his paw, and smashed it
down to earth, then pounced upon it, and
caught it in his teeth as it scuttled across the
snow trying to rise in the air again. As his
teeth crunched through the tender flesh and
fragile bones, he began naturally to eat.
Then he remembered, and, turning on the
back track, started for home, carrying the
ptarmigan in his mouth.

A mile above the forks, running velvet-
footed as was his custom, a gliding shadow
that cautiously prospected each new vista
of the trail, he came upon later imprints of
the large tracks he had discovered in the
early morning. As the track led his way, he
followed, prepared to meet the maker of it
at every turn of the stream.

He slid his head around a corner of rock,
where began an unusually large bend in the
stream, and his quick eyes made out
something that sent him crouching swiftly
down. It was the maker of the track, a large
female lynx. She was crouching as he had
crouched once that day, in front of her the
tight-rolled ball of quills. If he had been a
gliding shadow before, he now became the
ghost of such a shadow, as he crept and
circled around, and came up well to
leeward of the silent, motionless pair.

He lay down in the snow, depositing the
ptarmigan beside him, and with eyes
peering through the needles of a low-
growing spruce he watched the play of life
before him the waiting lynx and the waiting
porcupine, each intent on life; and, such
was the curiousness of the game, the way
of life for one lay in the eating of the other,

the porcupine, the big cat's squall of
sudden hurt and astonishment. One Eye half
arose in his excitement, his ears up, his tail
straight out and quivering behind him. The
lynx's bad temper got the best of her. She
sprang savagely at the thing that had hurt
her. But the porcupine, squealing and
grunting, with disrupted anatomy trying
feebly to roll up into its ball-protection,
flicked out its tail again, and again the big
cat squalled with hurt and astonishment.
Then she fell to backing away and
sneezing, her nose bristling with quills like a
monstrous pin cushion. She brushed her
nose with her paws, trying to dislodge the
fiery darts, thrust it into the snow, and
rubbed it against twigs and branches, and
all the time leaping about, ahead, sidewise,
up and down, in a frenzy of pain and fright.

She sneezed continually, and her stub of a
tail was doing its best toward lashing about
by giving quick, violent jerks. She quit her
antics, and quieted down for a long minute.
One Eye watched. And even he could not
repress a start and an involuntary bristling of
hair along his back when she suddenly
leaped, without warning, straight up in the
air, at the same time emitting a long and
most terrible squall. Then she sprang away,
up the trail, squalling with every leap she
made.

It was not until her racket had faded away in
the distance and died out that One Eye
ventured forth. He walked as delicately as
though all the snow were carpeted with
porcupine quills, erect and ready to pierce
the soft pads of his feet. The porcupine met
his approach with a furious squealing and a
clashing of its long teeth. It had managed to
roll up in a ball again, but it was not quite the
old compact ball; its muscles were too
much torn for that. It had been ripped almost
in half, and was still bleeding profusely.

Chapter 3 The Grey Cub

He was different from his brothers and
sisters. Their hair already betrayed the
reddish hue inherited from their mother, the
she-wolf; while he alone, in this particular,
took after his father. He was the one little
grey cub of the litter. He had bred true to the
straight wolf-stock in fact, he had bred true
to old One Eye himself, physically, with but
a single exception, and that was he had two
eyes to his father's one.

The grey cub's eyes had not been open
long, yet already he could see with steady
clearness. And while his eyes were still
closed, he had felt, tasted, and smelled. He
knew his two brothers and his two sisters
very well. He had begun to romp with them
in a feeble, awkward way, and even to
squabble, his little throat vibrating with a
queer rasping noise (the forerunner of the
growl), as he worked himself into a
passion. And long before his eyes had
opened he had learned by touch, taste, and
smell to know his mother a fount of warmth
and liquid food and tenderness. She
possessed a gentle, caressing tongue that
soothed him when it passed over his soft
little body, and that impelled him to snuggle
close against her and to doze off to sleep.

Most of the first month of his life had been
passed thus in sleeping; but now he could
see quite well, and he stayed awake for
longer periods of time, and he was coming
to learn his world quite well. His world was
gloomy; but he did not know that, for he
knew no other world. It was dim-lighted; but
his eyes had never had to adjust
themselves to any other light. His world was
very small. Its limits were the walls of the
lair; but as he had no knowledge of the wide
world outside, he was never oppressed by
the narrow confines of his existence.

swift, calculating stroke. Thus he learned
hurt; and on top of it he learned to avoid hurt,
first, by not incurring the risk of it; and
second, when he had incurred the risk, by
dodging and by retreating. These were
conscious actions, and were the results of
his first generalisations upon the world.
Before that he had recoiled automatically
from hurt, as he had crawled automatically
toward the light. After that he recoiled from
hurt because he KNEW that it was hurt.

He was a fierce little cub. So were his
brothers and sisters. It was to be expected.
He was a carnivorous animal. He came of a
breed of meat-killers and meat-eaters. His
father and mother lived wholly upon meat.
The milk he had sucked with his first
flickering life, was milk transformed directly
from meat, and now, at a month old, when
his eyes had been open for but a week, he
was beginning himself to eat meat meat
half-digested by the she-wolf and
disgorged for the five growing cubs that
already made too great demand upon her
breast.

But he was, further, the fiercest of the litter.
He could make a louder rasping growl than
any of them. His tiny rages were much more
terrible than theirs. It was he that first
learned the trick of rolling a fellow-cub over
with a cunning paw-stroke. And it was he
that first gripped another cub by the ear and
pulled and tugged and growled through
jaws tight-clenched. And certainly it was he
that caused the mother the most trouble in
keeping her litter from the mouth of the
cave.

The fascination of the light for the grey cub
increased from day to day. He was
perpetually departing on yard-long
adventures toward the cave's entrance, and
as perpetually being driven back. Only he
did not know it for an entrance. He did not

for him. Thus, when he had bumped his
nose on the back-wall a few times, he
accepted that he would not disappear into
walls. In the same way he accepted that his
father could disappear into walls. But he
was not in the least disturbed by desire to
find out the reason for the difference
between his father and himself. Logic and
physics were no part of his mental make-
up.

Like most creatures of the Wild, he early
experienced famine. There came a time
when not only did the meat-supply cease,
but the milk no longer came from his
mother's breast. At first, the cubs
whimpered and cried, but for the most part
they slept. It was not long before they were
reduced to a coma of hunger. There were
no more spats and squabbles, no more tiny
rages nor attempts at growling; while the
adventures toward the far white wall
ceased altogether. The cubs slept, while the
life that was in them flickered and died
down.

One Eye was desperate. He ranged far and
wide, and slept but little in the lair that had
now become cheerless and miserable. The
she-wolf, too, left her litter and went out in
search of meat. In the first days after the
birth of the cubs, One Eye had journeyed
several times back to the Indian camp and
robbed the rabbit snares; but, with the
melting of the snow and the opening of the
streams, the Indian camp had moved away,
and that source of supply was closed to him.

When the grey cub came back to life and
again took interest in the far white wall, he
found that the population of his world had
been reduced. Only one sister remained to
him. The rest were gone. As he grew
stronger, he found himself compelled to
play alone, for the sister no longer lifted her
head nor moved about. His little body

Chapter 4 The Wall Of The World

By the time his mother began leaving the
cave on hunting expeditions, the cub had
learned well the law that forbade his
approaching the entrance. Not only had this
law been forcibly and many times
impressed on him by his mother's nose and
paw, but in him the instinct of fear was
developing. Never, in his brief cave life, had
he encountered anything of which to be
afraid. Yet fear was in him. It had come
down to him from a remote ancestry through
a thousand thousand lives. It was a heritage
he had received directly from One Eye and
the she-wolf; but to them, in turn, it had
been passed down through all the
generations of wolves that had gone
before. Fear! that legacy of the Wild which
no animal may escape nor exchange for
pottage.

So the grey cub knew fear, though he knew
not the stuff of which fear was made.
Possibly he accepted it as one of the
restrictions of life. For he had already
learned that there were such restrictions.
Hunger he had known; and when he could
not appease his hunger he had felt
restriction. The hard obstruction of the cave-
wall, the sharp nudge of his mother's nose,
the smashing stroke of her paw, the hunger
unappeased of several famines, had borne
in upon him that all was not freedom in the
world, that to life there was limitations and
restraints. These limitations and restraints
were laws. To be obedient to them was to
escape hurt and make for happiness.

He did not reason the question out in this
man fashion. He merely classified the
things that hurt and the things that did not
hurt. And after such classification he
avoided the things that hurt, the restrictions
and restraints, in order to enjoy the
satisfactions and the remunerations of life.

impelled him to keep away from the white
wall. Growth is life, and life is for ever
destined to make for light. So there was no
damming up the tide of life that was rising
within him rising with every mouthful of meat
he swallowed, with every breath he drew. In
the end, one day, fear and obedience were
swept away by the rush of life, and the cub
straddled and sprawled toward the
entrance.

Unlike any other wall with which he had had
experience, this wall seemed to recede
from him as he approached. No hard
surface collided with the tender little nose
he thrust out tentatively before him. The
substance of the wall seemed as
permeable and yielding as light. And as
condition, in his eyes, had the seeming of
form, so he entered into what had been wall
to him and bathed in the substance that
composed it.

It was bewildering. He was sprawling
through solidity. And ever the light grew
brighter. Fear urged him to go back, but
growth drove him on. Suddenly he found
himself at the mouth of the cave. The wall,
inside which he had thought himself, as
suddenly leaped back before him to an
immeasurable distance. The light had
become painfully bright. He was dazzled by
it. Likewise he was made dizzy by this
abrupt and tremendous extension of space.
Automatically, his eyes were adjusting
themselves to the brightness, focusing
themselves to meet the increased distance
of objects. At first, the wall had leaped
beyond his vision. He now saw it again; but
it had taken upon itself a remarkable
remoteness. Also, its appearance had
changed. It was now a variegated wall,
composed of the trees that fringed the
stream, the opposing mountain that
towered above the trees, and the sky that
out-towered the mountain.

was not fear, but terror, that convulsed him.

But the slope grew more gradual, and its
base was grass-covered. Here the cub lost
momentum. When at last he came to a stop,
he gave one last agonised yell and then a
long, whimpering wail. Also, and quite as a
matter of course, as though in his life he had
already made a thousand toilets, he
proceeded to lick away the dry clay that
soiled him.

After that he sat up and gazed about him, as
might the first man of the earth who landed
upon Mars. The cub had broken through the
wall of the world, the unknown had let go its
hold of him, and here he was without hurt.
But the first man on Mars would have
experienced less unfamiliarity than did he.
Without any antecedent knowledge, without
any warning whatever that such existed, he
found himself an explorer in a totally new
world.

Now that the terrible unknown had let go of
him, he forgot that the unknown had any
terrors. He was aware only of curiosity in all
the things about him. He inspected the
grass beneath him, the moss berry plant
just beyond, and the dead trunk of the
blasted pine that stood on the edge of an
open space among the trees. A squirrel,
running around the base of the trunk, came
full upon him, and gave him a great fright.
He cowered down and snarled. But the
squirrel was as badly scared. It ran up the
tree, and from a point of safety chattered
back savagely.

This helped the cub's courage, and though
the woodpecker he next encountered gave
him a start, he proceeded confidently on his
way. Such was his confidence, that when a
moose-bird impudently hopped up to him,
he reached out at it with a playful paw. The
result was a sharp peck on the end of his

feet, and with a despairing yelp he pitched
down the rounded crescent, smashed
through the leafage and stalks of a small
bush, and in the heart of the bush, on the
ground, fetched up in the midst of seven
ptarmigan chicks.

They made noises, and at first he was
frightened at them. Then he perceived that
they were very little, and he became bolder.
They moved. He placed his paw on one,
and its movements were accelerated. 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 was made aware of a
sensation of hunger. His jaws closed
together. There was a crunching of fragile
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 the ptarmigan. Nor did he stop till
he had devoured the whole brood. Then he
licked his chops in quite the same way his
mother did, and began to crawl out of the
bush.

He encountered a feathered whirlwind. He
was confused and blinded by the rush of it
and the beat of angry wings. He hid his
head between his paws and yelped. The
blows increased. The mother ptarmigan
was in a fury. Then he became angry. He
rose up, snarling, striking out with his paws.
He sank his tiny teeth into one of the wings
and pulled and tugged sturdily. The
ptarmigan struggled against him,
showering blows upon him with her free
wing. It was his first battle. He was elated.
He forgot all about the unknown. He no
longer was afraid of anything. He was
fighting, tearing at a live thing that was
striking at him. Also, this live thing was
meat. The lust to kill was on him. He had just
destroyed little live things. He would now

causing him to continue his whimper. But as
he lay there, suddenly there came to him a
feeling as of something terrible impending.
The unknown with all its terrors rushed upon
him, and he shrank back instinctively into
the shelter of the bush. As he did so, a
draught of air fanned him, and a large,
winged body swept ominously and silently
past. A hawk, driving down out of the blue,
had barely missed him.

While he lay in the bush, recovering from his
fright and peering fearfully out, the mother-
ptarmigan on the other side of the open
space fluttered out of the ravaged nest. It
was because of her loss that she paid no
attention to the winged bolt of the sky. But
the cub saw, and it was a warning and a
lesson to him the swift downward swoop of
the hawk, the short skim of its body just
above the ground, the strike of its talons in
the body of the ptarmigan, the ptarmigan's
squawk of agony and fright, and the hawk's
rush upward into the blue, carrying the
ptarmigan away with it,

It was a long time before the cub left its
shelter. He had learned much. 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.
Nevertheless he felt a little prick of
ambition, a sneaking desire to have another
battle with that ptarmigan hen only the hawk
had carried her away. May be there were
other ptarmigan hens. He would go and
see.

He came down a shelving bank to the
stream. He had never seen water before.
The footing looked good. There were no
inequalities of surface. He stepped boldly
out on it; and went down, crying with fear,
into the embrace of the unknown. It was

clear of the water and lay down. He had
learned some more about the world. Water
was not alive. Yet it moved. Also, it looked
as solid as the earth, but was without any
solidity at all. His conclusion was that things
were not always what they appeared to be.
The cub's fear of the unknown was an
inherited distrust, and it had now been
strengthened by experience. Thenceforth,
in the nature of things, he would possess an
abiding distrust of appearances. He would
have to learn the reality of a thing before he
could put his faith into it.

One other adventure was destined for him
that day. He had recollected 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 was his body
tired with the adventures it had undergone,
but his little brain was equally tired. In all the
days he had lived it had not worked so hard
as on this one day. Furthermore, he was
sleepy. So he started out to look for the cave
and his mother, feeling at the same time an
overwhelming rush of loneliness and
helplessness.

He was sprawling along between some
bushes, when he heard a sharp intimidating
cry. There was a flash of yellow before his
eyes. He saw a weasel leaping swiftly 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
adventuring. It tried to retreat before him. He
turned it over with his paw. It made a queer,
grating noise. The next moment the flash of
yellow reappeared before his eyes. He
heard again the intimidating cry, and at the
same instant received a sharp blow on the
side of the neck and felt the sharp teeth of
the mother-weasel cut into his flesh.

missing, but getting a hold on the jaw
instead. The she wolf flirted her head like
the snap of a whip, breaking the weasel's
hold and flinging it high in the air. And, still in
the air, the she-wolf's jaws closed on the
lean, yellow body, and the weasel knew
death between the crunching teeth.

The cub experienced another access of
affection on the part of his mother. Her joy
at finding him seemed even greater than his
joy at being found. She nozzled him and
caressed him and licked the cuts made in
him by the weasel's teeth. Then, between
them, mother and cub, they ate the blood-
drinker, and after that went back to the cave
and slept.

Chapter 5 The Law Of Meat

The cub's development was rapid. He
rested for two days, and then ventured forth
from the cave again. It was on this
adventure that he found the young weasel
whose mother he had helped eat, and he
saw to it that the young weasel went the way
of its mother. 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
thereafter found him out and ranging a
wider area.

He began to get accurate measurement of
his strength and his weakness, and to know
when to be bold and when to be cautious.
He found it expedient to be cautious all the
time, except for the rare moments, when,
assured of his own intrepidity, he
abandoned himself to petty rages and lusts.

He was always a little demon of fury when
he chanced upon a stray ptarmigan. Never
did he fail to respond savagely to the chatter
of the squirrel he had first met on the blasted
pine. While the sight of a moose-bird almost
invariably put him into the wildest of rages;

Famine came again, and the cub with
clearer consciousness knew once more the
bite of hunger. The she-wolf ran herself thin
in the quest for meat. She rarely slept any
more in the cave, spending most of her time
on the meat-trail, and spending it vainly.
This famine was not a long one, but it was
severe while it lasted. The cub found no
more milk in his mother's breast, nor did he
get one mouthful of meat for himself.

Before, he had hunted in play, for the sheer
joyousness of it; now he hunted in deadly
earnestness, and found nothing. Yet the
failure of it accelerated his development.
He studied the habits of the squirrel with
greater carefulness, and strove with greater
craft to steal upon it and surprise it. He
studied the wood-mice and tried to dig
them out of their burrows; and he learned
much about the ways of moose-birds and
woodpeckers. And there came a day when
the hawk's shadow did not drive him
crouching into the bushes. He had grown
stronger and wiser, and more confident.
Also, he was desperate. So he sat on his
haunches, conspicuously in an open space,
and challenged the hawk down out of the
sky. For he knew that there, floating in the
blue above him, was meat, the meat his
stomach yearned after so insistently. But the
hawk refused to come down and give
battle, and the cub crawled away into a
thicket and whimpered his disappointment
and hunger.

The famine broke. The she-wolf brought
home meat. It was strange meat, different
from any she had ever brought before. It
was a lynx kitten, partly grown, like the cub,
but not so large. And it was all for him. His
mother had satisfied her hunger elsewhere;
though he did not know that it was the rest of
the lynx litter that had gone to satisfy her. Nor
did he know the desperateness of her
deed. He knew only that the velvet-furred

before they rushed together again, the lynx
lashed out at the cub with a huge fore-paw
that ripped his shoulder open to the bone
and sent him hurtling sidewise against the
wall. Then was added to the uproar the
cub's shrill yelp of pain and fright. But the
fight lasted so long that he had time to cry
himself out and to experience a second
burst of courage; and the end of the battle
found him 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. At first she caressed
the cub and licked his wounded shoulder;
but the blood she had lost had taken with it
her strength, and for all of a day and a night
she lay by her dead foe's side, without
movement, scarcely breathing. 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 the lynx was
devoured, while the she-wolf's wounds had
healed sufficiently to permit her to take the
meat-trail again.

The cub's shoulder was stiff and sore, and
for some time he limped from the terrible
slash he had received. But the world now
seemed changed. He went about in it with
greater confidence, with a feeling of
prowess that had not been his in the days
before the battle with the lynx. He had
looked upon life in a more ferocious aspect;
he had fought; he had buried his teeth in the
flesh of a foe; and he had survived. And
because of all this, he carried himself more
boldly, with a touch of defiance that was
new in him. He was no longer afraid of
minor things, and much of his timidity had
vanished, though the unknown never
ceased to press upon him with its mysteries
and terrors, intangible and ever-menacing.

He began to accompany his mother on the
meat-trail, and he saw much of the killing of

disorder, a chaos of gluttony and slaughter,
ruled over by chance, merciless, planless,
endless.

But the cub did not think in man-fashion. He
did not look at things with wide vision. He
was single-purposed, and entertained but
one thought or desire at a time. Besides the
law of meat, there were a myriad other and
lesser laws for him to learn and obey. The
world was filled with surprise. The stir of the
life that was in him, the play of his muscles,
was an unending happiness. To run down
meat was to experience thrills and elations.
His rages and battles were pleasures.
Terror itself, and the mystery of the
unknown, led to his living.

And there were easements and
satisfactions. To have a full stomach, to
doze lazily in the sunshine such things were
remuneration in full for his ardours and toils,
while his ardours and tolls were in
themselves self-remunerative. 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 1 The Makers Of Fire

The cub came upon it suddenly. It was his
own fault. He had been careless. He had left
the cave and run down to the stream to
drink. It might have been that he took no
notice because he was heavy with sleep.
(He had been out all night on the meat-trail,
and had but just then awakened.) And his
carelessness might have been due to the
familiarity of the trail to the pool. He had
travelled it often, and nothing had ever
happened on it.

One of the Indians arose and walked over to
him and stooped above him. The cub
cowered closer to the ground. It was the
unknown, objectified at last, in concrete
flesh and blood, bending over him and
reaching down to seize hold of him. His hair
bristled involuntarily; his lips writhed back
and his little fangs were bared. The hand,
poised like doom above him, hesitated,
and the man spoke laughing, "WABAM
WABISCA IP PIT TAH." ("Look! The white
fangs!")

The other Indians laughed loudly, and urged
the man on to pick up the cub. As the hand
descended closer and closer, there raged
within the cub a battle of the instincts. He
experienced two great impulsions to yield
and to fight. The resulting action was a
compromise. He did both. He yielded till the
hand almost touched him. Then he fought,
his teeth flashing in a snap that sank them
into the hand. The next moment he received
a clout alongside the head that knocked him
over on his side. Then all fight fled out of
him. His puppyhood and the instinct of
submission took charge of him. He sat up
on his haunches and ki-yi'd. But the man
whose hand he had bitten was angry. The
cub received a clout on the other side of his
head. Whereupon he sat up and ki-yi'd
louder than ever.

The four Indians laughed more loudly, while
even the man who had been bitten began to
laugh. They surrounded the cub and laughed
at him, while he wailed out his terror and his
hurt. In the midst of it, he heard something.
The Indians heard it too. But the cub knew
what it was, and with a last, long wail that
had in it more of triumph than grief, he
ceased his noise and waited for the coming
of his mother, of his ferocious and
indomitable mother who fought and killed all
things and was never afraid. She was
snarling as she ran. She had heard the cry

"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? Therefore was the father of Kiche
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 the
famine, and there was no meat for the
dogs."

"She has lived with the wolves," said a third
Indian.

"So it would seem, Three Eagles," Grey
Beaver answered, lying his hand on the
cub; "and this be the sign of it."

The cub snarled a little at the touch of the
hand, and the hand flew back to administer
a clout. Whereupon the cub covered its
fangs, and sank down submissively, while
the hand, returning, rubbed behind his ears,
and up and down his back.

"This be the sign of it," Grey Beaver went
on. "It is plain that his mother is Kiche. But
this father was a wolf. Wherefore is there in
him little dog and much wolf. His fangs be
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. For a time the
man-animals continued to make their
mouth noises. Then Grey Beaver took a
knife from a sheath that hung around his
neck, and went into the thicket and cut a
stick. White Fang watched him. He notched
the stick at each end and in the notches

remainder of the tribe, strung out as it was
on the march, trailed in. There were more
men and many women and children, forty
souls of them, and all heavily burdened with
camp equipage and outfit. Also there were
many dogs; and these, with the exception of
the part-grown puppies, were likewise
burdened with camp outfit. On their backs,
in bags that fastened tightly around
underneath, the dogs carried from twenty to
thirty pounds of weight.

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 and snapped in the
face of the open-mouthed oncoming wave
of dogs, and went down and under them,
feeling the sharp slash of teeth in his body,
himself biting and tearing at the legs and
bellies above him. There was a great
uproar. 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 striking upon bodies, and the yelps of
pain from the dogs so struck.

Only a few seconds elapsed before he was
on his feet again. He could now see the
man-animals driving back the dogs with
clubs and stones, defending him, saving
him from the savage teeth of his kind that
somehow was not his kind. And though
there was no reason in his brain for a clear
conception of so abstract a thing as justice,
nevertheless, in his own way, he felt the
justice of the man animals, and he knew
them for what they were makers of law and
executors of law. Also, he appreciated the
power with which they administered the
law. Unlike any animals he had ever
encountered, they did not bite nor claw.
They enforced their live strength with the

man-animals arose and went on with their
march; for a tiny man-animal took the other
end of the stick and led Kiche captive
behind him, and behind Kiche followed
White Fang, greatly perturbed and worried
by this new adventure he had entered upon.

They went down the valley of the stream, far
beyond White Fang's widest ranging, until
they came to the end of the valley, where the
stream ran into the Mackenzie River. Here,
where canoes were cached on poles high in
the air and where stood fish-racks for the
drying of fish, camp was made; and White
Fang looked on with wondering eyes. The
superiority of these man-animals increased
with every moment. There was their mastery
over all these sharp fanged dogs. It
breathed of power. But greater than that, to
the wolf-cub, was their mastery over things
not alive; their capacity to communicate
motion to unmoving things; their capacity to
change the very face of the world.

It was this last that especially affected him.
The elevation of frames of poles caught his
eye; yet this in itself was not so remarkable,
being done by the same creatures that flung
sticks and stones to great distances. But
when the frames of poles were made into
tepees by being covered with cloth and
skins, White Fang was astounded. It was the
colossal bulk of them that impressed him.
They arose around him, on every side, like
some monstrous quick growing form of life.
They occupied nearly the whole
circumference of his field of vision. He was
afraid of them. They loomed ominously
above him; and when the breeze stirred
them into huge movements, he cowered
down in fear, keeping his eyes warily upon
them, and prepared to spring away if they
attempted to precipitate themselves upon
him.

But in a short while his fear of the tepees

stiffened too, and answered with lifted lips.
They half circled about each other,
tentatively, snarling and bristling. This lasted
several minutes, and White Fang was
beginning to enjoy it, as a sort of game. But
suddenly, with remarkable swiftness, Lip-
lip leaped in, delivering a slashing snap,
and leaped away again. The snap had
taken effect on the shoulder that had been
hurt by the lynx and that was still sore deep
down near the bone. The surprise and hurt
of it brought a yelp out of White Fang; but the
next moment, in a rush of anger, he was
upon Lip-lip and snapping viciously.

But Lip-hp 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, yelping 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, born so, with natures destined
perpetually to clash.

Kiche licked White Fang soothingly with her
tongue, and tried to prevail upon him to
remain with her. But his curiosity was
rampant, and several minutes later he was
venturing forth on a new quest. He came
upon one of the man-animals, Grey
Beaver, who was squatting on his hams
and doing something with sticks and dry
moss spread before him on the ground.
White Fang came near to him and watched.
Grey Beaver made mouth-noises which
White Fang interpreted as not hostile, so he
came still nearer.

Women and children were carrying more
sticks and branches to Grey Beaver. It was
evidently an affair of moment. White Fang
came in until he touched Grey Beaver's
knee, so curious was he, and already
forgetful that this was a terrible man-

laughter and the meaning of it. It is not given
us to know how some animals know
laughter, and know when they are being
laughed at; but it was this same way that
White Fang knew it. And he felt shame that
the man-animals should be 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, raging at the end of her stick
like an animal gone mad to Kiche, the one
creature in the world who was not laughing
at him.

Twilight drew down and night came on, and
White Fang lay by his mother's side. His
nose and tongue still hurt, but he was
perplexed by a greater trouble. He was
homesick. He felt a vacancy in him, a need
for the hush and quietude of the stream and
the cave in the cliff. Life had become too
populous. There were so many of the man-
animals, men, women, and children, all
making noises and irritations. And there
were the dogs, ever squabbling and
bickering, bursting into uproars and
creating confusions. The restful loneliness
of the only life he had known was gone.
Here the very air was palpitant with life. It
hummed and buzzed unceasingly.
Continually changing its intensity and
abruptly variant in pitch, it impinged on his
nerves and senses, made him nervous and
restless and worried him with a perpetual
imminence of happening.

He watched the man-animals coming and
going and moving about the camp. In
fashion distantly resembling the way men
look upon the gods they create, so looked
White Fang upon the man-animals before
him. They were superior creatures, of a
verity, gods. To his dim comprehension they
were as much wonder-workers as gods
are to men. They were creatures of
mastery, possessing all manner of unknown

when it is torn and that is good to eat like
any flesh.

And so it was with White Fang. The man-
animals were gods unmistakable and
unescapable. As his mother, Kiche, had
rendered her allegiance to them at the first
cry of her name, so he was beginning to
render his allegiance. He gave them the trail
as a privilege indubitably theirs. When they
walked, he got out of their way. When they
called, he came. When they threatened, he
cowered down. When they commanded him
to go, he went away hurriedly. For behind
any wish of theirs was power to enforce that
wish, power that hurt, power that expressed
itself in clouts and clubs, in flying stones and
stinging lashes of whips.

He belonged to them as all dogs belonged
to them. His actions were theirs to
command. His body was theirs to maul, to
stamp upon, to tolerate. Such was the
lesson that was quickly borne in upon him. It
came hard, going as it did, counter to much
that was strong and dominant in his own
nature; and, while he disliked it in the
learning of it, unknown to himself he was
learning to like it. It was a placing of his
destiny in another's hands, a shifting of the
responsibilities of existence. This in itself
was compensation, for it is always easier to
lean upon another than to stand alone.

But it did not all happen in a day, this giving
over of himself, body and soul, to the man-
animals. He could not immediately forego
his wild heritage and his memories of the
Wild. There were days when he crept 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.

The effect of all this was to rob White Fang
of much of his puppyhood and to make him
in his comportment older than his age.
Denied the outlet, through play, of his
energies, he recoiled upon himself and
developed his mental processes. He
became cunning; he had idle time in which
to devote himself to thoughts of trickery.
Prevented from obtaining his share of meat
and fish when a general feed was given to
the camp-dogs, he became a clever thief.
He had to forage for himself, and he
foraged well, though he was oft-times a
plague to the squaws in consequence. He
learned to sneak about camp, to be crafty,
to know what was going on everywhere, to
see and to hear everything and to reason
accordingly, and successfully to devise
ways and means of avoiding his implacable
persecutor.

It was early in the days of his persecution
that he played his first really big crafty game
and got there from his first taste of revenge.
As Kiche, when with the wolves, had lured
out to destruction dogs from the camps of
men, so White Fang, in manner somewhat
similar, lured Lip-lip into Kiche's avenging
jaws. Retreating before Lip-lip, White Fang
made an indirect flight that led in and out
and around the various tepees of the camp.
He was a good runner, swifter than any
puppy of his size, and swifter than Lip-lip.
But he did not run his best in this chase. He
barely held his own, one leap ahead of his
pursuer.

Lip-lip, excited by the chase and by the
persistent nearness of his victim, forgot
caution and locality. When he remembered
locality, it was too late. Dashing at top
speed around a tepee, he ran full tilt into
Kiche lying at the end of her stick. He gave
one yelp of consternation, and then her
punishing jaws closed upon him. She was
tied, but he could not get away from her

underbrush. He ran back to her, licked her
face, and ran on again. And still she did not
move. He stopped and regarded her, all of
an intentness and eagerness, physically
expressed, that slowly faded out of him as
she turned her head and gazed back at the
camp.

There was something calling to him out
there in the open. His mother heard it too.
But she heard also that other and louder
call, the call of the fire and of man the call
which has been given alone of all animals to
the wolf to answer, to the wolf and the wild-
dog, who are brothers.

Kiche turned and slowly trotted back toward
camp. Stronger than the physical restraint of
the stick was the clutch of the camp upon
her. Unseen and occultly, the gods still
gripped with their power and would not let
her go. White Fang sat down in the shadow
of a birch and whimpered softly. There was
a strong smell of pine, and subtle wood
fragrances filled the air, reminding him of
his old life of freedom before the days of his
bondage. 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 the hours of his short life he had
depended upon her. The time was yet to
come for independence. So he arose and
trotted forlornly back to camp, pausing
once, and twice, to sit down and whimper
and to listen to the call that still sounded in
the depths of the forest.

In the Wild the time of a mother with her
young is short; but under the dominion of
man it is sometimes even shorter. Thus it
was with White Fang. 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 strip of scarlet
cloth, a bearskin, twenty cartridges, and
Kiche, went to pay the debt. White Fang saw

compared with this. He broke down and
began to cry and yelp. For a time each blow
brought a yelp from him; but fear passed
into terror, until finally his yelps were voiced
in unbroken succession, unconnected with
the rhythm of the punishment.

At last Grey Beaver withheld his hand. White
Fang, hanging limply, continued to cry. This
seemed to satisfy his master, who flung him
down roughly in the bottom of the canoe. In
the meantime the canoe had drifted down
the stream. Grey Beaver picked up the
paddle. White Fang was in his way. He
spurned him savagely with his foot. In that
moment White Fang's free nature flashed
forth again, and he sank his teeth into the
moccasined foot.

The beating that had gone before was as
nothing compared with the beating he now
received. Grey Beaver's wrath was terrible;
likewise was White Fang's fright. Not only
the hand, but the hard wooden paddle was
used upon him; and he was bruised and
sore in all his small body when he was again
flung down in the canoe. Again, and this
time with purpose, did Grey Beaver kick
him. White Fang did not repeat his attack on
the foot. He had learned another lesson of
his bondage. Never, no matter what the
circumstance, must he dare to bite the god
who was lord and master over him; the body
of the lord and master was sacred, not to be
defiled by the teeth of such as he. That was
evidently the crime of crimes, the one
offence there was no condoning nor
overlooking.

When the canoe touched the shore, White
Fang lay whimpering and motionless,
waiting the will of Grey Beaver. It was Grey
Beaver's will that he should go ashore, for
ashore he was flung, striking heavily on his
side and hurting his bruises afresh. He
crawled tremblingly to his feet and stood

exacted of him; and in return he escaped
beatings and his existence was tolerated.

Nay, Grey Beaver himself sometimes
tossed him a piece of meat, and defended
him against the other dogs in the eating of it.
And such a piece of meat was of value. It
was worth more, in some strange way, then
a dozen pieces of meat from the hand of a
squaw. Grey Beaver never petted nor
caressed. Perhaps it was the weight of his
hand, perhaps his justice, perhaps the
sheer power of him, and perhaps it was all
these things that influenced White Fang; for
a certain tie of attachment was forming
between him and his surly lord.

Insidiously, and by remote ways, as well as
by the power of stick and stone and clout of
hand, were the shackles of White Fang's
bondage being riveted upon him. The
qualities in his kind that in the beginning
made it possible for them to come in to the
fires of men, were qualities capable of
development. They were developing in him,
and the camp-life, replete with misery as it
was, was secretly endearing itself to him all
the time. But White Fang was unaware of it.
He knew only grief for the loss of Kiche,
hope for her return, and a hungry yearning
for the free life that had been his.

Chapter 3 The Outcast

Lip-lip continued so to darken his days that
White Fang became wickeder and more
ferocious than it was his natural right to be.
Savageness was a part of his make-up, but
the savageness thus developed exceeded
his make-up. He acquired a reputation for
wickedness amongst the man-animals
themselves. Wherever there was trouble and
uproar in camp, fighting and squabbling or
the outcry of a squaw over a bit of stolen
meat, they were sure to find White Fang
mixed up in it and usually at the bottom of it.

preliminaries to the actual combat snarlings
and bristlings and stiff-legged struttings.
But White Fang learned to omit these
preliminaries. Delay meant the coming
against him of all the young dogs. He must
do his work quickly and get away. So he
learnt to give no warning of his intention. He
rushed in and snapped and slashed on the
instant, without notice, before his foe could
prepare to meet him. Thus he learned how
to inflict quick and severe damage. Also he
learned the value of surprise. A dog, taken
off its guard, its shoulder slashed open or
its ear ripped in ribbons before it knew what
was happening, was a dog half whipped.

Furthermore, it was remarkably easy to
overthrow a dog taken by surprise; while a
dog, thus overthrown, invariably exposed
for a moment the soft underside of its neck
the vulnerable point at which to strike for its
life. White Fang knew this point. It was a
knowledge bequeathed to him directly from
the hunting generation of wolves. So it was
that White Fang's method when he took the
offensive, was: first to find a young dog
alone; second, to surprise it and knock it off
its feet; and third, to drive in with his teeth at
the soft throat.

Being but partly grown his jaws had not yet
become large enough nor strong enough to
make his throat-attack deadly; but many a
young dog went around camp with a
lacerated throat in token of White Fang's
intention. And one day, catching one of his
enemies alone on the edge of the woods,
he managed, by repeatedly overthrowing
him and attacking the throat, to cut the great
vein and let out the life. There was a great
row that night. He had been observed, the
news had been carried to the dead dog's
master, the squaws remembered all the
instances of stolen meat, and Grey Beaver
was beset by many angry voices. But he
resolutely held the door of his tepee, inside

himself to run with the pack, the curious
state of affairs obtained that no member of
the pack could run outside the pack. White
Fang would not permit it. What of his
bushwhacking and waylaying tactics, the
young dogs were afraid to run by
themselves. With the exception of Lip-lip,
they were compelled to hunch together for
mutual protection against the terrible enemy
they had made. A puppy alone by the river
bank meant a puppy dead or a puppy that
aroused the camp with its shrill pain and
terror as it fled back from the wolf-cub that
had waylaid it.

But White Fang's reprisals did not cease,
even when the young dogs had learned
thoroughly that they must stay together. He
attacked them when he caught them alone,
and they attacked him when they were
bunched. The sight of him was sufficient to
start them rushing after him, at which times
his swiftness usually carried him into safety.
But woe the dog that outran his fellows in
such pursuit! White Fang had learned to turn
suddenly upon the pursuer that was ahead
of the pack and thoroughly to rip him up
before the pack could arrive. This occurred
with great frequency, for, once in full cry, the
dogs were prone to forget themselves in the
excitement of the chase, while White Fang
never forgot himself. Stealing backward
glances as he ran, he was always ready to
whirl around and down the overzealous
pursuer that outran his fellows.

Young dogs are bound to play, and out of
the exigencies of the situation they realised
their play in this mimic warfare. Thus it was
that the hunt of White Fang became their
chief game a deadly game, withal, and at all
times a serious game. He, on the other
hand, being the fastest-footed, was
unafraid to venture anywhere. During the
period that he waited vainly for his mother to
come back, he led the pack many a wild

summer camp was being dismantled, and
the tribe, bag and baggage, was preparing
to go off to the fall hunting. White Fang
watched it all with eager eyes, and when the
tepees began to come down and the
canoes were loading at the bank, he
understood. Already the canoes were
departing, and some had disappeared
down the river.

Quite deliberately he determined to stay
behind. He waited his opportunity to slink
out of camp to the woods. Here, in the
running stream where ice was beginning to
form, he hid his trail. Then he crawled into
the heart of a dense thicket and waited. The
time passed by, and he slept intermittently
for hours. Then he was aroused by Grey
Beaver's voice calling him by name. There
were other voices. White Fang could hear
Grey Beaver's squaw taking part in the
search, and Mit-sah, who was Grey
Beaver's son.

White Fang trembled with fear, and though
the impulse came to crawl out of his hiding-
place, he resisted it. After a time the voices
died away, and some time after that he
crept out to enjoy the success of his
undertaking. Darkness was coming on, and
for a while he played about among the
trees, pleasuring in his freedom. Then, and
quite suddenly, he became aware of
loneliness. He sat down to consider,
listening to the silence of the forest and
perturbed by it. That nothing moved nor
sounded, seemed ominous. He felt the
lurking of danger, unseen and unguessed.
He was suspicious of the looming bulks of
the trees and of the dark shadows that
might conceal all manner of perilous things.

Then it was cold. Here was no warm side of
a tepee against which to snuggle. The frost
was in his feet, and he kept lifting first one
fore-foot and then the other. He curved his

the forest and into the moonlit open where
were no shadows nor darknesses. But no
village greeted his eyes. He had forgotten.
The village had gone away.

His wild flight ceased abruptly. There was
no place to which to flee. He slunk forlornly
through the deserted camp, smelling the
rubbish-heaps and the discarded rags and
tags of the gods. He would have been glad
for the rattle of stones about him, flung by an
angry squaw, glad for the hand of Grey
Beaver descending upon him in wrath;
while he would have welcomed with delight
Lip-lip and the whole snarling, cowardly
pack.

He came to where Grey Beaver's tepee
had stood. In the centre of the space it had
occupied, he sat down. He pointed his nose
at the moon. His throat was afflicted by rigid
spasms, his mouth opened, and in a heart-
broken cry bubbled up his loneliness and
fear, his grief for Kiche, all his past sorrows
and miseries as well as his apprehension of
sufferings and dangers to come. It was the
long wolf-howl, full-throated and mournful,
the first howl he had ever uttered.

The coming of daylight dispelled his fears
but increased his loneliness. The naked
earth, which so shortly before had been so
populous; thrust his loneliness more forcibly
upon him. It did not take him long to make up
his mind. He plunged into the forest and
followed the river bank down the stream. All
day he ran. He did not rest. He seemed
made to run on for ever. His iron-like body
ignored fatigue. And even after fatigue
came, his heritage of endurance braced
him to endless endeavour and enabled him
to drive his complaining body onward.

Where the river swung in against precipitous
bluffs, he climbed the high mountains
behind. Rivers and streams that entered the

was in that direction that the hunting lay. But
on the near bank, shortly before dark, a
moose coming down to drink, had been
espied by Kloo-kooch, who was Grey
Beaver's squaw. Now, had not the moose
come down to drink, had not Mit-sah been
steering out of the course because of the
snow, had not Kloo-kooch sighted the
moose, and had not Grey Beaver killed it
with a lucky shot from his rifle, all
subsequent things would have happened
differently. Grey Beaver would not have
camped on the near side of the Mackenzie,
and White Fang would have passed by and
gone on, either to die or to find his way to
his wild brothers and become one of them a
wolf to the end of his days.

Night had fallen. The snow was flying more
thickly, and White Fang, whimpering softly
to himself as he stumbled and limped along,
came upon a fresh trail in the snow. So
fresh was it that he knew it immediately for
what it was. Whining with eagerness, he
followed back from the river bank and in
among the trees. The camp-sounds came
to his ears. He saw the blaze of the fire,
Kloo kooch cooking, and Grey Beaver
squatting on his hams and mumbling a
chunk of raw tallow. There was fresh meat
in camp!

White Fang expected a beating. He
crouched and bristled a little at the thought
of it. Then he went forward again. He feared
and disliked the beating he knew to be
waiting for him. But he knew, further, that
the comfort of the fire would be his, the
protection of the gods, the companionship
of the dogs the last, a companionship of
enmity, but none the less a companionship
and satisfying to his gregarious needs.

He came cringing and crawling into the
firelight. Grey Beaver saw him, and
stopped munching the tallow. White Fang

while the puppies themselves were being
broken in to the harness. Furthermore, the
sled was of some service, for it carried
nearly two hundred pounds of outfit and
food.

White Fang had seen the camp-dogs toiling
in the harness, so that he did not resent
overmuch the first placing of the harness
upon himself. About his neck was put a
moss-stuffed collar, which was connected
by two pulling-traces to a strap that passed
around his chest and over his back. It was to
this that was fastened the long rope by
which he pulled at the sled.

There were seven puppies in the team. The
others had been born earlier in the year and
were nine and ten months old, while White
Fang was only eight months old. Each dog
was fastened to the sled by a single rope.
No two ropes were of the same length,
while the difference in length between any
two ropes was at least that of a dog's body.
Every rope was brought to a ring at the front
end of the sled. The sled itself was without
runners, being a birch-bark toboggan, with
upturned forward end to keep it from
ploughing under the snow. This construction
enabled the weight of the sled and load to
be distributed over the largest snow-
surface; for the snow was crystal-powder
and very soft. Observing the same principle
of widest distribution of weight, the dogs at
the ends of their ropes radiated fan-fashion
from the nose of the sled, so that no dog
trod in another's footsteps.

There was, furthermore, another virtue in
the fan-formation. The ropes of varying
length prevented the dogs attacking from
the rear those that ran in front of them. For a
dog to attack another, it would have to turn
upon one at a shorter rope. In which case it
would find itself face to face with the dog
attacked, and also it would find itself facing

Mit-sah would throw the stinging lash of the
thirty-foot cariboo-gut whip into his face
and compel him to turn tail and run on. Lip-
lip might face the pack, but he could not
face that whip, and all that was left him to do
was to keep his long rope taut and his flanks
ahead of the teeth of his mates.

But a still greater cunning lurked in the
recesses of the Indian mind. To give point to
unending pursuit of the leader, Mit-sah
favoured him over the other dogs. These
favours aroused in them jealousy and
hatred. In their presence Mit-sah would give
him meat and would give it to him only. This
was maddening to them. They would rage
around just outside the throwing-distance
of the whip, while Lip-lip devoured the meat
and Mit-sah protected him. And when there
was no meat to give, Mit-sah would keep
the team at a distance and make believe to
give meat to Lip-lip.

White Fang took kindly to the work. He had
travelled a greater distance than the other
dogs in the yielding of himself to the rule of
the gods, and he had learned more
thoroughly the futility of opposing their will. In
addition, the persecution he had suffered
from the pack had made the pack less to
him in the scheme of things, and man more.
He had not learned to be dependent on his
kind for companionship. Besides, Kiche
was well-nigh forgotten; and the chief outlet
of expression that remained to him was in
the allegiance he tendered the gods he had
accepted as masters. So he worked hard,
learned discipline, and was obedient.
Faithfulness and willingness characterised
his toil. These are essential traits of the wolf
and the wild-dog when they have become
domesticated, and these traits White Fang
possessed in unusual measure.

A companionship did exist between White
Fang and the other dogs, but it was one of

begun to fight.

As rigid as the sled-discipline of the gods,
was the discipline maintained by White
Fang amongst his fellows. He never
allowed them any latitude. He compelled
them to an unremitting respect for him. They
might do as they pleased amongst
themselves. That was no concern of his. But
it WAS his concern that they leave him alone
in his isolation, get out of his way when he
elected to walk among them, and at all
times acknowledge his mastery over them.
A hint of stiff-leggedness on their part, a
lifted lip or a bristle of hair, and he would be
upon them, merciless and cruel, swiftly
convincing them of the error of their way.

He was a monstrous tyrant. His mastery
was rigid as steel. He oppressed the weak
with a vengeance. Not for nothing had he
been exposed to the pitiless struggles for
life in the day of his cubhood, when his
mother and he, alone and unaided, held
their own and survived in the ferocious
environment of the Wild. And not for nothing
had he learned to walk softly when superior
strength went by. He oppressed the weak,
but he respected the strong. And in the
course of the long journey with Grey Beaver
he walked softly indeed amongst the full-
grown dogs in the camps of the strange
man animals they encountered.

The months passed by. Still continued the
journey of Grey Beaver. White Fang's
strength was developed by the long hours
on trail and the steady toil at the sled; and it
would have seemed that his mental
development was well-nigh complete. He
had come to know quite thoroughly the
world in which he lived. His outlook was
bleak and materialistic. The world as he
saw it was a fierce and brutal world, a world
without warmth, a world in which caresses
and affection and the bright sweetnesses of

modify the law that he had learned from
Grey Beaver: namely, that the unpardonable
crime was to bite one of the gods. In this
village, after the custom of all dogs in all
villages, White Fang went foraging, for
food. A boy was chopping frozen moose-
meat with an axe, and the chips were flying
in the snow. White Fang, sliding by in quest
of meat, stopped and began to eat the
chips. He observed the boy lay down the
axe and take up a stout club. White Fang
sprang clear, just in time to escape the
descending blow. The boy pursued him,
and he, a stranger in the village, fled
between two tepees to find himself
cornered against a high earth bank.

There was no escape for White Fang. The
only way out was between the two tepees,
and this the boy guarded. Holding his club
prepared to strike, he drew in on his
cornered quarry. White Fang was furious.
He faced the boy, bristling and snarling, his
sense of justice outraged. He knew the law
of forage. All the wastage of meat, such as
the frozen chips, belonged to the dog that
found it. He had done no wrong, broken no
law, yet here was this boy preparing to give
him a beating. White Fang scarcely knew
what happened. He did it in a surge of rage.
And he did it so quickly that the boy did not
know either. All the boy knew was that he
had in some unaccountable way been
overturned into the snow, and that his club-
hand had been ripped wide open by White
Fang's teeth.

But White Fang knew that he had broken the
law of the gods. He had driven his teeth into
the sacred flesh of one of them, and could
expect nothing but a most terrible
punishment. He fled away to Grey Beaver,
behind whose protecting legs he crouched
when the bitten boy and the boy's family
came, demanding vengeance. But they
went away with vengeance unsatisfied.

possessions was a step, and this step he
made. What was his god's was to be
defended against all the world even to the
extent of biting other gods. Not only was
such an act sacrilegious in its nature, but it
was fraught with peril. The gods were all-
powerful, and a dog was no match against
them; yet White Fang learned to face them,
fiercely belligerent and unafraid. Duty rose
above fear, and thieving gods learned to
leave Grey Beaver's property alone.

One thing, in this connection, White Fang
quickly learnt, and that was that a thieving
god was usually a cowardly god and prone
to run away at the sounding of the alarm.
Also, he learned that but brief time elapsed
between his sounding of the alarm and Grey
Beaver coming to his aid. He came to know
that it was not fear of him that drove the thief
away, but fear of Grey Beaver. White Fang
did not give the alarm by barking. He never
barked. His method was to drive straight at
the intruder, and to sink his teeth in if he
could. Because he was morose and
solitary, having nothing to do with the other
dogs, he was unusually fitted to guard his
master's property; and in this he was
encouraged and trained by Grey Beaver.
One result of this was to make White Fang
more ferocious and indomitable, and more
solitary.

The months went by, binding stronger and
stronger the covenant between dog and
man. This was the ancient covenant that the
first wolf that came in from the Wild entered
into with man. And, like all succeeding
wolves and wild dogs that had done
likewise, White Fang worked the covenant
out for himself. The terms were simple. For
the possession of a flesh-and-blood god,
he exchanged his own liberty. Food and
fire, protection and companionship, were
some of the things he received from the
god. In return, he guarded the god's

the memory pictures he retained of them.
Also, he stood less in fear of them than
formerly, stalking among them with a
certain careless ease that was as new to
him as it was enjoyable.

There was Baseek, a grizzled old fellow
that in his younger days had but to uncover
his fangs to send White Fang cringing and
crouching to the right about. From him White
Fang had learned much of his own
insignificance; and from him he was now to
learn much of the change and development
that had taken place in himself. While
Baseek had been growing weaker with
age, White Fang had been growing stronger
with youth.

It was at the cutting-up of a moose, fresh-
killed, that White Fang learned of the
changed relations in which he stood to the
dog world. He had got for himself a hoof
and part of the shin-bone, to which quite a
bit of meat was attached. Withdrawn from
the immediate scramble of the other dogs in
fact out of sight behind a thicket he was
devouring his prize, when Baseek rushed in
upon him. Before he knew what he was
doing, he had slashed the intruder twice
and sprung clear. Baseek was surprised by
the other's temerity and swiftness of attack.
He stood, gazing stupidly across at White
Fang, the raw, red shin-bone between
them.

Baseek was old, and already he had come
to know the increasing valour of the dogs it
had been his wont to bully. Bitter
experiences these, which, perforce, he
swallowed, calling upon all his wisdom to
cope with them. In the old days he would
have sprung upon White Fang in a fury of
righteous wrath. But now his waning
powers would not permit such a course. He
bristled fiercely and looked ominously
across the shin-bone at White Fang. And

off, preparing to retreat. He dared not risk a
fight with this young lightning-flash, and
again he knew, and more bitterly, the
enfeeblement of oncoming age. His
attempt to maintain his dignity was heroic.
Calmly turning his back upon young dog and
shin-bone, as though both were beneath
his notice and unworthy of his
consideration, he stalked grandly away.
Nor, until well out of sight, did he stop to lick
his bleeding wounds.

The effect on White Fang was to give him a
greater faith in himself, and a greater pride.
He walked less softly among the grown
dogs; his attitude toward them was less
compromising. Not that he went out of his
way looking for trouble. Far from it. But upon
his way he demanded consideration. He
stood upon his right to go his way
unmolested and to give trail to no dog. He
had to be taken into account, that was all.
He was no longer to be disregarded and
ignored, as was the lot of puppies, and as
continued to be the lot of the puppies that
were his team-mates. They got out of the
way, gave trail to the grown dogs, and gave
up meat to them under compulsion. But
White Fang, uncompanionable, solitary,
morose, scarcely looking to right or left,
redoubtable, forbidding of aspect, remote
and alien, was accepted as an equal by his
puzzled elders. They quickly learned to
leave him alone, neither venturing hostile
acts nor making overtures of friendliness. If
they left him alone, he left them alone a state
of affairs that they found, after a few
encounters, to be pre eminently desirable.

In midsummer White Fang had an
experience. Trotting along in his silent way
to investigate a new tepee which had been
erected on the edge of the village while he
was away with the hunters after moose, he
came full upon Kiche. He paused and
looked at her. He remembered her vaguely,

males must not fight the females. He did not
know anything about this law, for it was no
generalisation of the mind, not a something
acquired by experience of the world. He
knew it as a secret prompting, as an urge of
instinct of the same instinct that made him
howl at the moon and stars of nights, and
that made him fear death and the unknown.

The months went by. White Fang grew
stronger, heavier, and more compact, while
his character was developing along the
lines laid down by his heredity and his
environment. His heredity was a life stuff
that may be likened to clay. It possessed
many possibilities, was capable of being
moulded into many different forms.
Environment served to model the clay, to
give it a particular form. Thus, had White
Fang never come in to the fires of man, the
Wild would have moulded him into a true
wolf. But the gods had given him a different
environment, and he was moulded into a
dog that was rather wolfish, but that was a
dog and not a wolf.

And so, according to the clay of his nature
and the pressure of his surroundings, his
character was being moulded into a certain
particular shape. There was no escaping it.
He was becoming more morose, more
uncompanionable, more solitary, more
ferocious; while the dogs were learning
more and more that it was better to be at
peace with him than at war, and Grey
Beaver was coming to prize him more
greatly with the passage of each day.

White Fang, seeming to sum up strength in
all his qualities, nevertheless suffered from
one besetting weakness. He could not
stand being laughed at. The laughter of men
was a hateful thing. They might laugh
among themselves about anything they
pleased except himself, and he did not
mind. But the moment laughter was turned

away into the woods. He was better fitted
for the life than the other dogs, for he had
the training of his cubhood to guide him.
Especially adept did he become in stalking
small living things. He would lie concealed
for hours, following every movement of a
cautious tree-squirrel, waiting, with a
patience as huge as the hunger he suffered
from, until the squirrel ventured out upon the
ground. Even then, White Fang was not
premature. He waited until he was sure of
striking before the squirrel could gain a tree-
refuge. Then, and not until then, would he
flash from his hiding-place, a grey
projectile, incredibly swift, never failing its
mark the fleeing squirrel that fled not fast
enough.

Successful as he was with squirrels, there
was one difficulty that prevented him from
living and growing fat on them. There were
not enough squirrels. So he was driven to
hunt still smaller things. So acute did his
hunger become at times that he was not
above rooting out wood-mice from their
burrows in the ground. Nor did he scorn to
do battle with a weasel as hungry as himself
and many times more ferocious.

In the worst pinches of the famine he stole
back to the fires of the gods. But he did not
go into the fires. He lurked in the forest,
avoiding discovery and robbing the snares
at the rare intervals when game was caught.
He even robbed Grey Beaver's snare of a
rabbit at a time when Grey Beaver
staggered and tottered through the forest,
sitting down often to rest, what of weakness
and of shortness of breath.

One day While Fang encountered a young
wolf, gaunt and scrawny, loose-jointed
with famine. Had he not been hungry
himself, White Fang might have gone with
him and eventually found his way into the
pack amongst his wild brethren. As it was,

base of a high bluff, they rounded a corner
of rock and found themselves face to face.
They paused with instant alarm, and looked
at each other suspiciously.

White Fang was in splendid condition. His
hunting had been good, and for a week he
had eaten his fill. He was even gorged from
his latest kill. But in the moment he looked at
Lip-lip his hair rose on end all along his
back. It was an involuntary bristling on his
part, the physical state that in the past had
always accompanied the mental state
produced in him by Lip-lip's bullying and
persecution. As in the past he had bristled
and snarled at sight of Lip-lip, so now, and
automatically, he bristled and snarled. He
did not waste any time. The thing was done
thoroughly and with despatch. Lip-lip
essayed to back away, but White Fang
struck him hard, shoulder to shoulder. Lip-
lip was overthrown and rolled upon his
back. White Fang's teeth drove into the
scrawny throat. There was a death-
struggle, during which White Fang walked
around, stiff legged and observant. Then he
resumed his course and trotted on along the
base of the bluff.

One day, not long after, he came to the
edge of the forest, where a narrow stretch
of open land sloped down to the Mackenzie.
He had been over this ground before, when
it was bare, but now a village occupied it.
Still hidden amongst the trees, he paused to
study the situation. Sights and sounds and
scents were familiar to him. It was the old
village changed to a new place. But sights
and sounds and smells were different from
those he had last had when he fled away
from it. There was no whimpering nor
wailing. Contented sounds saluted his ear,
and when he heard the angry voice of a
woman he knew it to be the anger that
proceeds from a full stomach. And there
was a smell in the air of fish. There was

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.

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

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

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 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

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

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
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

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.

Chapter 2 The Mad God

A small number of white men lived in Fort
Yukon. These men had been long in the
country. They called themselves Sour-
doughs, and took great pride in so
classifying themselves. For other men, new
in the land, they felt nothing but disdain. The
men who came ashore from the steamers
were newcomers. They were known as
CHECHAQUOS, and they always wilted at
the application of the name. They made
their bread with baking-powder. This was
the invidious distinction between them and
the Sour-doughs, who, forsooth, made
their bread from sour-dough because they
had no baking-powder.

All of which is neither here nor there. The
men in the fort disdained the newcomers
and enjoyed seeing them come to grief.
Especially did they enjoy the havoc worked
amongst the newcomers' dogs by White
Fang and his disreputable gang. When a
steamer arrived, the men of the fort made it
a point always to come down to the bank
and see the fun. They looked forward to it
with as much anticipation as did the Indian
dogs, while they were not slow to
appreciate the savage and crafty part
played by White Fang.

But there was one man amongst them who
particularly enjoyed the sport. He would
come running at the first sound of a
steamboat's whistle; and when the last fight
was over and White Fang and the pack had
scattered, he would return slowly to the fort,
his face heavy with regret. Sometimes,
when a soft southland dog went down,

eye-teeth, larger than their fellows, showed
under his lean lips like fangs. His eyes were
yellow and muddy, as though Nature had run
short on pigments and squeezed together
the dregs of all her tubes. It was the same
with his hair, sparse and irregular of growth,
muddy-yellow and dirty-yellow, rising on
his head and sprouting out of his face in
unexpected tufts and bunches, in
appearance like clumped and wind-blown
grain.

In short, Beauty Smith was a monstrosity,
and the blame of it lay elsewhere. He was
not responsible. The clay of him had been
so moulded in the making. He did the
cooking for the other men in the fort, the
dish-washing and the drudgery. They did
not despise him. Rather did they tolerate
him in a broad human way, as one tolerates
any creature evilly treated in the making.
Also, they feared him. His cowardly rages
made them dread a shot in the back or
poison in their coffee. But somebody had to
do the cooking, and whatever else his
shortcomings, Beauty Smith could cook.

This was the man that looked at White Fang,
delighted in his ferocious prowess, and
desired to possess him. He made overtures
to White Fang from the first. White Fang
began by ignoring him. Later on, when the
overtures became more insistent, White
Fang bristled and bared his teeth and
backed away. He did not like the man. The
feel of him was bad. He sensed the evil in
him, and feared the extended hand and the
attempts at soft-spoken speech. Because
of all this, he hated the man.

With the simpler creatures, good and bad
are things simply understood. The good
stands for all things that bring easement and
satisfaction and surcease from pain.
Therefore, the good is liked. The bad
stands for all things that are fraught with

He visited Grey Beaver's camp often, and
hidden under his coat was always a black
bottle or so. One of the potencies of whisky
is the breeding of thirst. Grey Beaver got the
thirst. His fevered membranes and burnt
stomach began to clamour for more and
more of the scorching fluid; while his brain,
thrust all awry by the unwonted stimulant,
permitted him to go any length to obtain it.
The money he had received for his furs and
mittens and moccasins began to go. It went
faster and faster, and the shorter his
money-sack grew, the shorter grew his
temper.

In the end his money and goods and temper
were all gone. Nothing remained to him but
his thirst, a prodigious possession in itself
that grew more prodigious with every sober
breath he drew. Then it was that Beauty
Smith had talk with him again about the sale
of White Fang; but this time the price offered
was in bottles, not dollars, and Grey
Beaver's ears were more eager to hear.

"You ketch um dog you take um all right,"
was his last word.

The bottles were delivered, but after two
days. "You ketch um dog," were Beauty
Smith's words to Grey Beaver.

White Fang slunk into camp one evening
and dropped down with a sigh of content.
The dreaded white god was not there. For
days his manifestations of desire to lay
hands on him had been growing more
insistent, and during that time White Fang
had been compelled to avoid the camp. He
did not know what evil was threatened by
those insistent hands. He knew only that
they did threaten evil of some sort, and that
it was best for him to keep out of their reach.

But scarcely had he lain down when Grey
Beaver staggered over to him and tied a

upon the stranger who was dragging him
away. Beauty Smith did not jump away. He
had been waiting for this. He swung the club
smartly, stopping the rush midway and
smashing White Fang down upon the
ground. Grey Beaver laughed and nodded
approval. Beauty Smith tightened the thong
again, and White Fang crawled limply and
dizzily to his feet.

He did not rush a second time. One smash
from the club was sufficient to convince him
that the white god knew how to handle it,
and he was too wise to fight the inevitable.
So he followed morosely at Beauty Smith's
heels, his tail between his legs, yet snarling
softly under his breath. But Beauty Smith
kept a wary eye on him, and the club was
held always ready to strike.

At the fort Beauty Smith left him securely
tied and went in to bed. White Fang waited
an hour. Then he applied his teeth to the
thong, and in the space of ten seconds was
free. He had wasted no time with his teeth.
There had been no useless gnawing. The
thong was cut across, diagonally, almost as
clean as though done by a knife. White Fang
looked up at the fort, at the same time
bristling and growling. Then he turned and
trotted back to Grey Beaver's camp. He
owed no allegiance to this strange and
terrible god. He had given himself to Grey
Beaver, and to Grey Beaver he considered
he still belonged.

But what had occurred before was
repeated with a difference. Grey Beaver
again made him fast with a thong, and in the
morning turned him over to Beauty Smith.
And here was where the difference came
in. Beauty Smith gave him a beating. Tied
securely, White Fang could only rage futilely
and endure the punishment. Club and whip
were both used upon him, and he
experienced the worst beating he had ever

It was the quality that was peculiarly the
possession of his kind; the quality that set
apart his species from all other species; the
quality that has enabled the wolf and the
wild dog to come in from the open and be
the companions of man.

After the beating, White Fang was dragged
back to the fort. But this time Beauty Smith
left him tied with a stick. One does not give
up a god easily, and so with White Fang.
Grey Beaver was his own particular god,
and, in spite of Grey Beaver's will, White
Fang still clung to him and would not give
him up. Grey Beaver had betrayed and
forsaken him, but that had no effect upon
him. Not for nothing had he surrendered
himself body and soul to Grey Beaver.
There had been no reservation on White
Fang's part, and the bond was not to be
broken easily.

So, in the night, when the men in the fort
were asleep, White Fang applied his teeth
to the stick that held him. The wood was
seasoned and dry, and it was tied so
closely to his neck that he could scarcely get
his teeth to it. It was only by the severest
muscular exertion and neck-arching that he
succeeded in getting the wood between his
teeth, and barely between his teeth at that;
and it was only by the exercise of an
immense patience, extending through many
hours, that he succeeded in gnawing
through the stick. This was something that
dogs were not supposed to do. It was
unprecedented. But White Fang did it,
trotting away from the fort in the early
morning, with the end of the stick hanging to
his neck.

He was wise. But had he been merely wise
he would not have gone back to Grey
Beaver who had already twice betrayed
him. But there was his faithfulness, and he
went back to be betrayed yet a third time.

to laughter, and made it a point after
painfully tricking him, to laugh at him. This
laughter was uproarious and scornful, and
at the same time the god pointed his finger
derisively at White Fang. At such times
reason fled from White Fang, and in his
transports of rage he was even more mad
than Beauty Smith.

Formerly, White Fang had been merely the
enemy of his kind, withal a ferocious
enemy. He now became the enemy of all
things, and more ferocious than ever. To
such an extent was he tormented, that he
hated blindly and without the faintest spark
of reason. He hated the chain that bound
him, the men who peered in at him through
the slats of the pen, the dogs that
accompanied the men and that snarled
malignantly at him in his helplessness. He
hated the very wood of the pen that confined
him. And, first, last, and most of all, he
hated Beauty Smith.

But Beauty Smith had a purpose in all that
he did to White Fang. One day a number of
men gathered about the pen. Beauty Smith
entered, club in hand, and took the chain off
from White Fang's neck. When his master
had gone out, White Fang turned loose and
tore around the pen, trying to get at the men
outside. He was magnificently terrible. Fully
five feet in length, and standing two and
one-half feet at the shoulder, he far
outweighed a wolf of corresponding size.
From his mother he had inherited the
heavier proportions of the dog, so that he
weighed, without any fat and without an
ounce of superfluous flesh, over ninety
pounds. It was all muscle, bone, and sinew-
fighting flesh in the finest condition.

The door of the pen was being opened
again. White Fang paused. Something
unusual was happening. He waited. The
door was opened wider. Then a huge dog