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upon him in wrath; while he would have welcomed with delight
Lip-lip and the whole snarling, cowardly pack.
He came to where Gray Beaver s tepee had stood. In the center of
the space it had occupied, he sat down. He pointed his nose at the
moon. His throat was afflicted with rigid spasms, his mouth
opened, and in a heartbroken cry bubbled up his loneliness and
fear, his grief for Kiche, all his past sorrows and miseries as
well as his apprehension of sufferings and dangers to come. It was
the long wolfhowl, full-throated and mournful, the first howl he
had ever uttered.
The coming of daylight dispelled his fears, but increased his
loneliness. The naked earth, which so shortly before had been so
populous, thrust his loneliness more forcibly upon him. It did not
take him long to make up his mind. He plunged into the forest and
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followed the river bank down the stream. All day he ran. He did
not rest. He seemed made to run on forever. His iron-like body
ignored fatigue. And even after fatigue came, his heritage of
endurance braced him to endless endeavor and enabled him to
drive his complaining body onward.
Where the river swung in against precipitous bluffs, he climbed the
high mountains behind. Rivers and streams that entered the main
river he forded or swam. Often he took to the rim-ice that was
beginning to form, and more than once he crashed through and
struggled for life in the icy current. Always he was on the lookout
for the trail of the gods where it might leave the river and proceed
inland.
White Fang was intelligent beyond the average of his kind; yet his
mental vision was not wide enough to embrace the other bank of
the Mackenzie. What if the trail of the gods led out on that side? It
never entered his head. Later on, when he had traveled more and
grown older and wiser and come to know more of trails and rivers,
it might be that he could grasp and apprehend such a possibility.
But that mental power was yet in the future. Just now he ran
blindly, his own bank of the Mackenzie alone entering into his
calculations.
All night he ran, blundering in the darkness into mishaps and
obstacles that delayed but did not daunt. By the middle of the
second day he had been running continuously for thirty hours, and
the iron of his flesh was giving out. It was the endurance of his
mind that kept him going. He had not eaten in forty hours, and he
was weak with hunger. The repeated drenchings in the icy water
had likewise had their effect on him. His handsome coat was
draggled. The broad pads of his feet were bruised and bleeding.
He had begun to limp and this limp increased with the hours. To
make it worse, the light of the sky was obscured and snow began
to fall- a raw, moist, melting, clinging snow, slippery under foot,
that hid him from the landscape he traversed, and that covered
over the inequalities of the ground so that the way of his feet was
more difficult and painful.
Gray Beaver had intended camping that night on the far bank of
the Mackenzie, for it was in that direction that the hunting lay. But
on the near bank, shortly after dark, a moose, coming down to
drink, had been espied by Kloo-kooch, who was Gray Beaver s
squaw. Now, had not the moose come down to drink, had not Mit-
sah been steering out of the course because of the snow, had not
Kloo-kooch sighted the moose, and had not Gray Beaver killed it
with a lucky shot from his rifle, all subsequent things would have
happened differently. Gray Beaver would not have camped on the
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near side of the Mackenzie, and White Fang would have passed by
and gone on, either to die or to find his way to his wild brothers
and become one of them- a wolf to the end of his days.
Night had fallen. The snow was flying more thickly, and White
Fang, whimpering softly to himself as he stumbled and limped
along, came upon a fresh trail in the snow. So fresh was it that he
knew it immediately for what it was. Whining with eagerness, he
followed back from the river bank and in among the trees. The
camp-sounds came to his ears. He saw the blaze of the fire, Kloo-
kooch cooking, and Gray Beaver squatting on his hams and
munching a chunk of raw tallow.
There was fresh meat in camp!
White Fang expected a beating. He crouched and bristled a little at
the thought of it. Then he went forward again. He feared and
disliked the beating he knew to be waiting for him. But he knew,
further, that the comfort of the fire would be his, the protection of
the gods, the companionship of the dogs- the last, a companionship
of enmity, but none the less a companionship and satisfying to his
gregarious needs.
He came cringing and crawling into the firelight. Gray Beaver saw
him and stopped munching his tallow. White Fang crawled slowly,
cringing and groveling in the abjectness of his abasement and
submission. He crawled straight toward Gray Beaver, every inch of
his progress becoming slower and more painful. At last he lay at
the master s feet, into whose possession he now surrendered
himself, voluntarily, body and soul. Of his own choice he came in
to sit by man s fire and to be ruled by him. White Fang trembled,
waiting for the punishment to fall upon him. There was a
movement of the hand above him. He cringed involuntarily under
the expected blow. It did not fall. He stole a glance upward. Gray
Beaver was breaking the lump of tallow in half! Gray Beaver was
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