White Fang - Jack London (most inspirational books of all time .TXT) 📗

to hurt with pinch and twist and wrench.  In strange villages he had encountered the hands of the children and learned that they were cruel to hurt.  Also, he had once nearly had an eye poked out by a toddling papoose.  From these experiences he became suspicious of all children.  He could not tolerate them.  When they came near with their ominous hands, he got up.

It was in a village at the Great Slave Lake, that, in the course of resenting the evil of the hands of the man-animals, he came to 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.  Grey Beaver defended White Fang.  So did Mit-sah and Kloo-kooch.  White Fang, listening to the wordy war and watching the angry gestures, knew that his act was justified.  And so it came that he learned there were gods and gods.  There were his gods, and there were other gods, and between them there was a difference.  Justice or injustice, it was all the same, he must take all things from the hands of his own gods.  But he was not compelled to take injustice from the other gods.  It was his privilege to resent it with his teeth.  And this also was a law of the gods.

Before the day was out, White Fang was to learn more about this law.  Mit-sah, alone, gathering firewood in the forest, encountered the boy that had been bitten.  With him were other boys.  Hot words passed.  Then all the boys attacked Mit-sah.  It was going hard with him.  Blows were raining upon him from all sides.  White Fang looked on at first.  This was an affair of the gods, and no concern of his.  Then he realised that this was Mit-sah, one of his own particular gods, who was being maltreated.  It was no reasoned impulse that made White Fang do what he then did.  A mad rush of anger sent him leaping in amongst the combatants.  Five minutes later the landscape was covered with fleeing boys, many of whom dripped blood upon the snow in token that White Fang’s teeth had not been idle.  When Mit-sah told the story in camp, Grey Beaver ordered meat to be given to White Fang.  He ordered much meat to be given, and White Fang, gorged and sleepy by the fire, knew that the law had received its verification.

It was in line with these experiences that White Fang came to learn the law of property and the duty of the defence of property.  From the protection of his god’s body to the protection of his god’s 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 property, defended his body, worked for him, and obeyed him.

The possession of a god implies service.  White Fang’s was a service of duty and awe, but not of love.  He did not know what love was.  He had no experience of love.  Kiche was a remote memory.  Besides, not only had he abandoned the Wild and his kind when he gave himself up to man, but the terms of the covenant were such that if ever he met Kiche again he would not desert his god to go with her.  His allegiance to man seemed somehow a law of his being greater than the love of liberty, of kind and kin.

CHAPTER VI—THE FAMINE

The spring of the year was at hand when Grey Beaver finished his long journey.  It was April, and White Fang was a year old when he pulled into the home villages and was loosed from the harness by Mit-sah.  Though a long way from his full growth, White Fang, next to Lip-lip, was the largest yearling in the village.  Both from his father, the wolf, and from Kiche, he had inherited stature and strength, and already he was measuring up alongside the full-grown dogs.  But he had not yet grown compact.  His body was slender and rangy, and his strength more stringy than massive, His coat was the true wolf-grey, and to all appearances he was true wolf himself.  The quarter-strain of dog he had inherited from Kiche had left no mark on him physically, though it had played its part in his mental make-up.

He wandered through the village, recognising with staid satisfaction the various gods he had known before the long journey.  Then there were the dogs, puppies growing up like himself, and grown dogs that did not look so large and formidable as 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 White Fang, resurrecting quite a deal of the old awe, seemed to wilt and to shrink in upon himself and grow small, as he cast about in his mind for a way to beat a retreat not too inglorious.

And right here Baseek erred.  Had he contented himself with looking fierce and ominous, all would have been well.  White Fang, on the verge of retreat, would have retreated, leaving the meat to him.  But Baseek did not wait.  He considered the victory already his and stepped forward to the meat.  As he bent his head carelessly to smell it, White Fang bristled slightly.  Even then it was not too late for Baseek to retrieve the situation.  Had he merely stood over the meat, head up and glowering, White Fang would ultimately have slunk away.  But the fresh meat was strong in Baseek’s nostrils, and greed urged him to take a bite of it.

This was too much for White Fang.  Fresh upon his months of mastery over his own team-mates, it was beyond his self-control to stand idly by while another devoured the meat that belonged to him.  He struck, after his custom, without warning.  With the first slash, Baseek’s right ear was ripped into ribbons.  He was astounded at the suddenness of it.  But more things, and most grievous ones, were happening with equal suddenness.  He was knocked off his feet.  His throat was bitten.  While he was struggling to his feet the young dog sank teeth twice into his shoulder.  The swiftness of it was bewildering.  He made a futile rush at White Fang, clipping the empty air with an outraged snap.  The next moment his nose was laid open, and he was staggering backward away from the meat.

The situation was now reversed.  White Fang stood over the shin-bone, bristling and menacing, while Baseek stood a little way off, preparing to retreat.  He dared not risk a fight with this young lightning-flash,