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 Withdrawn from the immediate scramble of the other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 no se

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, 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,

but he REMEMBERED her, and that was more than could be said for her.

She lifted her lip at him in the old snarl of menace, and his memory

became clear. His forgotten cubhood, all that was associated with that

familiar snarl, rushed back to him. Before he had known the gods, she had

been to him the centre-pin of the universe. The old familiar feelings of that

time came back upon him, surged up within him. He bounded towards her

joyously, and she met him with shrewd fangs that laid his cheek open to

the bone. He did not understand. He backed away, bewildered and

puzzled.

But it was not Kiche's fault. A wolf-mother was not made to remember

her cubs of a year or so before. So she did not remember White Fang. He

was a strange animal, an intruder; and her presentlitter of puppies gave

her the right to resent such intrusion.

One of the puppies sprawled up to White Fang. They were half-

brothers, only they did not know it. White Fang sniffed the puppy

curiously, whereupon Kiche rushed upon him, gashing is face a second

time. He backed farther away. All the old memories and associations died

down again and passed into the grave from which they had been

resurrected. He looked at Kiche licking her puppy and stopping now and

then to snarl at him. She was without value to him. He had learned to get

along without her. Her meaning was forgotten. There was no place for her

in his scheme of things, as there was no place for him in hers.

He was still standing, stupid and bewildered, the memories forgotten,

wondering what it was all about, when Kiche attacked him a third time,

intent on driving him away altogether from the vicinity. And White Fang

allowed himself to be driven away. This was a female of his kind, and it

was a law of his kind that the 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 upon him he would

fly into a most terrible rage. Grave, dignified, sombre, a laugh made him

frantic to ridiculousness. It so outraged him and upset him that for hours

he would behave like a demon. And woe to the dog that at such times ran

foul of him. He knew the law too well to take it out of Grey Beaver;

behind Grey Beaver were a club and godhead. But behind the dogs there

was nothing but space, and into this space they flew when White Fang

came on the scene, made mad by laughter.

In the third year of his life there came a great famine to the Mackenzie

Indians. In the summer the fish failed. In the winter the cariboo forsook

their accustomed track. Moose were scarce, the rabbits almost disappeared,

hunting and preying animals perished. Denied their usual food-supply,

weakened by hunger, they fell upon and devoured one another. Only the

strong survived. White Fang's gods were always hunting animals. The old

and the weak of them died of hunger. There was wailing in the village,

where the women and children went without in order that what little they

had might go into the bellies of the lean and hollow-eyed hunters who trod

the forest in the vain pursuit of meat.

To such extremity were the gods driven that they ate the soft- tanned

leather of their mocassins and mittens, while the dogs ate the harnesses off

their backs and the very whip-lashes. Also, the dogs ate one another, and

also the gods ate the dogs. The weakest and the more worthless were eaten

first. The dogs that still lived, looked on and understood. A few of the

boldest and wisest forsook the fires of the gods, which had now become a

shambles, and fled into the forest, where, in the end, they starved to death

or were eaten by wolves.

In this time of misery, White Fang, too, stole 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, he ran the young wolf down and

killed and ate him.

Fortune seemed to favour him. Always, when hardest pressed for food,

he found something to kill. Again, when he was weak, it was his luck that

none of the larger preying animals chanced upon him. Thus, he was strong

from the two days' eating a lynx had afforded him when the hungry wolf-

pack ran full tilt upon him. It was a long, cruel chase, but he was better

nourished than they, and in the end outran them. And not only did he

outrun them, but, circling widely back on his track, he gathered in one of

his exhausted pursuers.

After that he left that part of the country and journeyed over to the

valley wherein he had been born. Here, in the old lair, he encountered

Kiche.

Up to her old tricks, she, too, had fled the inhospitable fires of the

gods and gone back to her old refuge to give birth to her young. Of this

litter but one remained alive when White Fang came upon the scene, and

this one was not destined to live long. Young life had little chance in such

a famine.

Kiche's greeting of her grown son was anything but affectionate. But

White Fang did not mind. He had outgrown his mother. So he turned tail

philosophically and trotted on up the stream. At the forks he took the

turning to the left, where he found the lair of the lynx with whom his

mother and he had fought long before. Here, in the abandoned lair, he

settled down and rested for a day.

During the early summer, in the last days of the famine, he met Lip-lip,

who had likewise taken to the woods, where he had eked out a miserable

existence.

White Fang came upon him unexpectedly. Trotting in opposite

directions along the 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 food. The

famine was gone. He came out boldly from the forest and trotted into

camp straight to Grey Beaver's tepee. Grey Beaver was not there; but

Kloo-kooch welcomed him with glad cries and the whole of a fresh-caught

fish, and he lay down to wait Grey Beaver's coming.
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