Lip-lip was White Fang’s own kind, and,being only a puppy, did not seem dangerous;so White Fang prepared to meet him in a friendly spirit.But when the strangers walk became stiff-legged and his lips lifted clear of his teeth, White Fang 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-lip 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-animal.Suddenly he saw a strange thing like mist beginning to arise from the sticks and moss beneath Grey Beaver’s hands. Then, amongst the sticks themselves, appeared a live thing, twisting and turning, of a colour like the colour of the sun in the sky. White Fang knew nothing about fire. It drew him as the light, in the mouth of the cave had drawn him in his early puppyhood. He crawled the several steps toward the flame. He heard Grey Beaver chuckle above him, and he knew the sound was not hostile. Then his nose touched the flame, and at the same instant his little tongue went out to it.
For a moment he was paralysed. The unknown,lurking in the midst of the sticks and moss,was savagely clutching him by the nose.He scrambled backward,bursting out in an astonished explosion of ki-yi’s.At the sound, Kiche leaped snarling to the end of her stick,and there raged terribly because she could not come to his aid.But Grey Beaver laughed loudly, and slapped his thighs,and told the happening to all the rest of the camp,till everybody was laughing uproariously.But White Fang sat on his haunches and ki-yi’d and ki-yi’d,a forlorn and pitiable little figure in the midst of the man-animals.
It was the worst hurt he had ever known.Both nose and tongue had been scorched by the live thing,sun-coloured, that had grown up under Grey Beaver’s hands.He cried and cried interminably,and every fresh wail was greeted by bursts of laughter on the part of the man-animals. He tried to soothe his nose with his tongue, but the tongue was burnt too, and the two hurts coming together produced greater hurt; whereupon he cried more hopelessly and helplessly than ever.
And then shame came to him.He knew 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 and impossible potencies,overlords of the alive and the not alive—making obey that which moved,imparting movement to that which did not move,and making life, sun-coloured and biting life,to grow out of dead moss and wood.They were fire-makers!They were gods.
CHAPTER II THE BONDAGE
The days were thronged with experience for White Fang.During the time that Kiche was tied by the stick,he ran about over all the camp, inquiring,investigating, learning.He quickly came to know much of the ways of the man-animals,but familiarity did not breed contempt.The more he came to know them,the more they vindicated their superiority,the more they displayed their mysterious powers,the greater loomed their god-likeness.
To man has been given the grief, often,of seeing his gods overthrown and his altars crumbling;but to the wolf and the wild dog that have come in to crouch at man’s feet,this grief has never come. Unlike man,whose gods are of the unseen and the overguessed,vapours and mists of fancy eluding the garmenture of reality,wandering wraiths of desired goodness and power,intangible out-croppings of self into the realm of spirit—unlike man,the wolf and the wild dog that have come in to the fire find their gods in the living flesh, solid to the touch, occupying earth-space and requiring time for the accomplishment of their ends and their existence. No effort of faith is necessary to believe in such a god; no effort of will can possibly induce disbelief in such a god. There is no getting away from it. There it stands, on its two hind-legs, club in hand, immensely potential, passionate and wrathful and loving, god and mystery and power all wrapped up and around by flesh that bleeds 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.