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of her stick, and there raged terribly because she could not come to
his aid. But Gray 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-colored, that had grown
up under Gray 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
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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 wonderworkers 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 movements
to that which did not move, and making life, sun-colored and
biting life, to grow out of dead moss and wood. They were fire-
makers! They were gods!
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CHAPTER TWO.
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, vapors and mists of fancy eluding the garmenture of
reality, wandering wraiths of desired goodness and power,
intangible outcroppings 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 the 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 include 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 of 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.
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
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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
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