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 ferociousdetermination. 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 extendedoutward 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

respectfulobedience.

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 muscularexertion 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.
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