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.

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