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 rippling and manging 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.

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