CHAPTER II

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, shrieking its death-cry

under the fangs of the pack, this man would be unable to contain

himself, and would leap into the air and cry out with delight. And

always he had a sharp and covetous eye for White Fang.

This man was called “Beauty” by the other men of the fort. No one knew

his first name, and in general he was known in the country as Beauty

Smith. But he was anything save a beauty. To antithesis was due his

naming. He was pre-eminently unbeautiful. Nature had been niggardly

with him. He was a small man to begin with; and upon his meagre frame

was deposited an even more strikingly meagre head. Its apex might be

likened to a point. In fact, in his boyhood, before he had been named

Beauty by his fellows, he had been called “Pinhead.”

Backward, from the apex, his head slanted down to his neck and forward

it slanted uncompromisingly to meet a low and remarkably wide forehead.

Beginning here, as though regretting her parsimony, Nature had spread

his features with a lavish hand. His eyes were large, and between them

was the distance of two eyes. His face, in relation to the rest of him,

was prodigious. In order to discover the necessary area, Nature had

given him an enormous prognathous jaw. It was wide and heavy, and

protruded outward and down until it seemed to rest on his chest.

Possibly this appearance was due to the weariness of the slender neck,

unable properly to support so great a burden.

This jaw gave the impression of ferocious determination. But something

lacked. Perhaps it was from excess. Perhaps the jaw was too large. At

any rate, it was a lie. Beauty Smith was known far and wide as the

weakest of weak-kneed and snivelling cowards. To complete his

description, his teeth were large and yellow, while the two 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 discomfort, menace, and hurt, and is

hated accordingly. White Fang’s feel of Beauty Smith was bad. From the

man’s distorted body and twisted mind, in occult ways, like mists

rising from malarial marshes, came emanations of the unhealth within.

Not by reasoning, not by the five senses alone, but by other and

remoter and uncharted senses, came the feeling to White Fang that the

man was ominous with evil, pregnant with hurtfulness, and therefore a

thing bad, and wisely to be hated.

White Fang was in Grey Beaver’s camp when Beauty Smith first visited

it. At the faint sound of his distant feet, before he came in sight,

White Fang knew who was coming and began to bristle. He had been lying

down in an abandon of comfort, but he arose quickly, and, as the man

arrived, slid away in true wolf-fashion to the edge of the camp. He did

not know what they said, but he could see the man and Grey Beaver

talking together. Once, the man pointed at him, and White Fang snarled

back as though the hand were just descending upon him instead of being,

as it was, fifty feet away. The man laughed at this; and White Fang

slunk away to the sheltering woods, his head turned to observe as he

glided softly over the ground.

Grey Beaver refused to sell the dog. He had grown rich with his trading

and stood in need of nothing. Besides, White Fang was a valuable

animal, the strongest sled-dog he had ever owned, and the best leader.

Furthermore, there was no dog like him on the Mackenzie nor the Yukon.

He could fight. He killed other dogs as easily as men killed

mosquitoes. (Beauty Smith’s eyes lighted up at this, and he licked his

thin lips with an eager tongue). No, White Fang was not for sale at any

price.

But Beauty Smith knew the ways of Indians. 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 leather thong around his neck. He sat down beside White

Fang, holding the end of the thong in his hand. In the other hand he

held a bottle, which, from time to time, was inverted above his head to

the accompaniment of gurgling noises.

An hour of this passed, when the vibrations of feet in contact with the

ground foreran the one who approached. White Fang heard it first, and

he was bristling with recognition while Grey Beaver still nodded

stupidly. White Fang tried to draw the thong softly out of his master’s

hand; but the relaxed fingers closed tightly and Grey Beaver roused

himself.

Beauty Smith strode into camp and stood over White Fang. He snarled

softly up at the thing of fear, watching keenly the deportment of the

hands. One hand extended outward and began to descend upon his head.

His soft snarl grew tense and harsh. The hand continued slowly to

descend, while he crouched beneath it, eyeing it malignantly, his snarl

growing shorter and shorter as, with quickening breath, it approached

its culmination. Suddenly he snapped, striking with his fangs like a

snake. The hand was jerked back, and the teeth came together emptily

with a sharp click. Beauty Smith was frightened and angry. Grey Beaver

clouted White Fang alongside the head, so that he cowered down close to

the earth in respectful obedience.

White Fang’s suspicious eyes followed every movement. He saw Beauty

Smith go away and return with a stout club. Then the end of the thong

was given over to him by Grey Beaver. Beauty Smith started to walk

away. The thong grew taut. White Fang resisted it. Grey Beaver clouted

him right and left to make him get up and follow. He obeyed, but with a

rush, hurling himself 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 received in his

life. Even the big beating given him in his puppyhood by Grey Beaver

was mild compared with this.

Beauty Smith enjoyed the task. He delighted in it. He gloated over his

victim, and his eyes flamed dully, as he swung the whip or club and

listened to White Fang’s cries of pain and to his helpless bellows and

snarls. For Beauty Smith was cruel in the way that cowards are cruel.

Cringing and snivelling himself before the blows or angry speech of a

man, he revenged himself, in turn, upon creatures weaker than he. All

life likes power, and Beauty Smith was no exception. Denied the

expression of power amongst his own kind, he fell back upon the lesser

creatures and there vindicated the life that was in him. But Beauty

Smith had not created himself, and no blame was to be attached to him.

He had come into the world with a twisted body and a brute

intelligence. This had constituted the clay of him, and it had not been

kindly moulded by the world.

White Fang knew why he was being beaten. When Grey Beaver tied the

thong around his neck, and passed the end of the thong into Beauty

Smith’s keeping, White Fang knew that it was his god’s will for him to

go with Beauty Smith. And when Beauty Smith left him tied outside the

fort, he knew that it was Beauty Smith’s will that he should remain

there. Therefore, he had disobeyed the will of both the gods, and

earned the consequent punishment. He had seen dogs change owners in the

past, and he had seen the runaways beaten as he was being beaten. He

was wise, and yet in the nature of him there were forces greater than

wisdom. One of these was fidelity. He did not love Grey Beaver, yet,

even in the face of his will and his anger, he was faithful to him. He

could not help it. This faithfulness was a quality of the clay that

composed him. 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. Again

he yielded to the tying of a thong around his neck by Grey Beaver, and

again Beauty Smith came to claim him. And this time he was beaten even

more severely than before.

Grey Beaver looked on stolidly while the white man wielded the whip. He

gave no protection. It was no longer his dog. When the beating was over

White Fang was sick. A soft southland dog would have died under it, but

not he. His school of life had been sterner, and he was himself of

sterner stuff. He had too great vitality. His clutch on life was too

strong. But he was very sick. At first he was unable to drag himself

along, and Beauty Smith had to wait half-an-hour for him. And then,

blind and reeling, he followed at Beauty Smith’s heels back to the

fort.

But now he was tied with a chain that defied his teeth, and he strove

in vain, by lunging, to draw the staple from the timber into which it

was driven. After a few days, sober and bankrupt, Grey Beaver departed

up the Porcupine on his long journey to the Mackenzie. White Fang

remained on the Yukon, the property of a man more than half mad and all

brute. But what is a dog to know in its consciousness of madness? To

White Fang, Beauty Smith was a veritable, if terrible, god. He was a

mad god at best, but White Fang knew nothing of madness; he knew only

that he must submit to the will of this new master, obey his every whim

and fancy.