CHAPTER III

THE REIGN OF HATE

Under the tutelage of the mad god, White Fang became a fiend. He was

kept chained in a pen at the rear of the fort, and here Beauty Smith

teased and irritated and drove him wild with petty torments. The man

early discovered White Fang’s susceptibility to laughter, and made it a

point after painfully tricking him, to laugh at him. This laughter was

uproarious and scornful, and at the same time the god pointed his

finger derisively at White Fang. At such times reason fled from White

Fang, and in his transports of rage he was even more mad than Beauty

Smith.

Formerly, White Fang had been merely the enemy of his kind, withal a

ferocious enemy. He now became the enemy of all things, and more

ferocious than ever. To such an extent was he tormented, that he hated

blindly and without the faintest spark of reason. He hated the chain

that bound him, the men who peered in at him through the slats of the

pen, the dogs that accompanied the men and that snarled malignantly at

him in his helplessness. He hated the very wood of the pen that

confined him. And, first, last, and most of all, he hated Beauty Smith.

But Beauty Smith had a purpose in all that he did to White Fang. One

day a number of men gathered about the pen. Beauty Smith entered, club

in hand, and took the chain off from White Fang’s neck. When his master

had gone out, White Fang turned loose and tore around the pen, trying

to get at the men outside. He was magnificently terrible. Fully five

feet in length, and standing two and one-half feet at the shoulder, he

far outweighed a wolf of corresponding size. From his mother he had

inherited the heavier proportions of the dog, so that he weighed,

without any fat and without an ounce of superfluous flesh, over ninety

pounds. It was all muscle, bone, and sinew-fighting flesh in the finest

condition.

The door of the pen was being opened again. White Fang paused.

Something unusual was happening. He waited. The door was opened wider.

Then a huge dog was thrust inside, and the door was slammed shut behind

him. White Fang had never seen such a dog (it was a mastiff); but the

size and fierce aspect of the intruder did not deter him. Here was some

thing, not wood nor iron, upon which to wreak his hate. He leaped in

with a flash of fangs that ripped down the side of the mastiff’s neck.

The mastiff shook his head, growled hoarsely, and plunged at White

Fang. But White Fang was here, there, and everywhere, always evading

and eluding, and always leaping in and slashing with his fangs and

leaping out again in time to escape punishment.

The men outside shouted and applauded, while Beauty Smith, in an

ecstasy of delight, gloated over the ripping and mangling performed by

White Fang. There was no hope for the mastiff from the first. He was

too ponderous and slow. In the end, while Beauty Smith beat White Fang

back with a club, the mastiff was dragged out by its owner. Then there

was a payment of bets, and money clinked in Beauty Smith’s hand.

White Fang came to look forward eagerly to the gathering of the men

around his pen. It meant a fight; and this was the only way that was

now vouchsafed him of expressing the life that was in him. Tormented,

incited to hate, he was kept a prisoner so that there was no way of

satisfying that hate except at the times his master saw fit to put

another dog against him. Beauty Smith had estimated his powers well,

for he was invariably the victor. One day, three dogs were turned in

upon him in succession. Another day a full-grown wolf, fresh-caught

from the Wild, was shoved in through the door of the pen. And on still

another day two dogs were set against him at the same time. This was

his severest fight, and though in the end he killed them both he was

himself half killed in doing it.

In the fall of the year, when the first snows were falling and mush-ice

was running in the river, Beauty Smith took passage for himself and

White Fang on a steamboat bound up the Yukon to Dawson. White Fang had

now achieved a reputation in the land. As “the Fighting Wolf” he was

known far and wide, and the cage in which he was kept on the

steam-boat’s deck was usually surrounded by curious men. He raged and

snarled at them, or lay quietly and studied them with cold hatred. Why

should he not hate them? He never asked himself the question. He knew

only hate and lost himself in the passion of it. Life had become a hell

to him. He had not been made for the close confinement wild beasts

endure at the hands of men. And yet it was in precisely this way that

he was treated. Men stared at him, poked sticks between the bars to

make him snarl, and then laughed at him.

They were his environment, these men, and they were moulding the clay

of him into a more ferocious thing than had been intended by Nature.

Nevertheless, Nature had given him plasticity. Where many another

animal would have died or had its spirit broken, he adjusted himself

and lived, and at no expense of the spirit. Possibly Beauty Smith,

arch-fiend and tormentor, was capable of breaking White Fang’s spirit,

but as yet there were no signs of his succeeding.

If Beauty Smith had in him a devil, White Fang had another; and the two

of them raged against each other unceasingly. In the days before, White

Fang had had the wisdom to cower down and submit to a man with a club

in his hand; but this wisdom now left him. The mere sight of Beauty

Smith was sufficient to send him into transports of fury. And when they

came to close quarters, and he had been beaten back by the club, he

went on growling and snarling, and showing his fangs. The last growl

could never be extracted from him. No matter how terribly he was

beaten, he had always another growl; and when Beauty Smith gave up and

withdrew, the defiant growl followed after him, or White Fang sprang at

the bars of the cage bellowing his hatred.

When the steamboat arrived at Dawson, White Fang went ashore. But he

still lived a public life, in a cage, surrounded by curious men. He was

exhibited as “the Fighting Wolf,” and men paid fifty cents in gold dust

to see him. He was given no rest. Did he lie down to sleep, he was

stirred up by a sharp stick—so that the audience might get its money’s

worth. In order to make the exhibition interesting, he was kept in a

rage most of the time. But worse than all this, was the atmosphere in

which he lived. He was regarded as the most fearful of wild beasts, and

this was borne in to him through the bars of the cage. Every word,

every cautious action, on the part of the men, impressed upon him his

own terrible ferocity. It was so much added fuel to the flame of his

fierceness. There could be but one result, and that was that his

ferocity fed upon itself and increased. It was another instance of the

plasticity of his clay, of his capacity for being moulded by the

pressure of environment.

In addition to being exhibited he was a professional fighting animal.

At irregular intervals, whenever a fight could be arranged, he was

taken out of his cage and led off into the woods a few miles from town.

Usually this occurred at night, so as to avoid interference from the

mounted police of the Territory. After a few hours of waiting, when

daylight had come, the audience and the dog with which he was to fight

arrived. In this manner it came about that he fought all sizes and

breeds of dogs. It was a savage land, the men were savage, and the

fights were usually to the death.

Since White Fang continued to fight, it is obvious that it was the

other dogs that died. He never knew defeat. His early training, when he

fought with Lip-lip and the whole puppy-pack, stood him in good stead.

There was the tenacity with which he clung to the earth. No dog could

make him lose his footing. This was the favourite trick of the wolf

breeds—to rush in upon him, either directly or with an unexpected

swerve, in the hope of striking his shoulder and overthrowing him.

Mackenzie hounds, Eskimo and Labrador dogs, huskies and Malemutes—all

tried it on him, and all failed. He was never known to lose his

footing. Men told this to one another, and looked each time to see it

happen; but White Fang always disappointed them.

Then there was his lightning quickness. It gave him a tremendous

advantage over his antagonists. No matter what their fighting

experience, they had never encountered a dog that moved so swiftly as

he. Also to be reckoned with, was the immediateness of his attack. The

average dog was accustomed to the preliminaries of snarling and

bristling and growling, and the average dog was knocked off his feet

and finished before he had begun to fight or recovered from his

surprise. So often did this happen, that it became the custom to hold

White Fang until the other dog went through its preliminaries, was good

and ready, and even made the first attack.

But greatest of all the advantages in White Fang’s favour, was his

experience. He knew more about fighting than did any of the dogs that

faced him. He had fought more fights, knew how to meet more tricks and

methods, and had more tricks himself, while his own method was scarcely

to be improved upon.

As the time went by, he had fewer and fewer fights. Men despaired of

matching him with an equal, and Beauty Smith was compelled to pit

wolves against him. These were trapped by the Indians for the purpose,

and a fight between White Fang and a wolf was always sure to draw a

crowd. Once, a full-grown female lynx was secured, and this time White

Fang fought for his life. Her quickness matched his; her ferocity

equalled his; while he fought with his fangs alone, and she fought with

her sharp-clawed feet as well.

But after the lynx, all fighting ceased for White Fang. There were no

more animals with which to fight—at least, there was none considered

worthy of fighting with him. So he remained on exhibition until spring,

when one Tim Keenan, a faro-dealer, arrived in the land. With him came

the first bull-dog that had ever entered the Klondike. That this dog

and White Fang should come together was inevitable, and for a week the

anticipated fight was the mainspring of conversation in certain

quarters of the town.