Джек Лондон: Белый клык / White Fang

“She has lived with the wolves,” said a third Indian.

“So it seems, Three Eagles,” Grey Beaver answered, laying his hand on the cub; “and this is the sign of it. It is plain that his mother is Kiche. But his father was a wolf. In him there is little dog and much wolf. His fangs are white, and White Fang shall be his name. I have spoken. He is my dog. For was not Kiche my brother’s dog? And is not my brother dead?”

The cub, who had thus received a name in the world, lay and watched. Then Grey Beaver tied the she-wolf to the tree with a stick-bondage. White Fang followed and lied down beside her.

Salmon Tongue’s hand rolled him over on his back. Kiche looked on anxiously. The hand rubbed his stomach in a playful way. It was a position of such helplessness that White Fang’s whole nature protested against it. He could do nothing to defend himself. He was to know fear many times in his dealing with man; yet it was a sign of the fearless companionship with man.

After a time, White Fang heard strange noises. A few minutes later the remainder of the tribe came. There were more men and many women and children, forty of them. Also there were many dogs.

White Fang had never seen dogs before, but at sight of them he felt that they were his own kind, only somehow different. But they displayed little difference from the wolf when they discovered the cub and his mother. There was a rush. White Fang bristled and snarled in the face of the dogs, and went down and under them, feeling the sharp teeth in his body, himself biting and tearing at the legs and bellies above him. He could hear the snarl of Kiche as she fought for him; and he could hear the cries of the man-animals, the sound of clubs beating upon bodies, and the cries of pain from the dogs.

The men drove the dogs back and saved him from the savage teeth of his kind that somehow was not his kind. He thought the men had some unusual, astonishing, unnatural, god-like power (though, of course, he didn’t know anything about gods).

And White Fang licked his hurts and meditated upon his first taste of pack-cruelty and his introduction to the pack. He had never dreamed that his own kind consisted of more than One Eye, his mother, and himself. Here he had discovered many more creatures apparently of his own kind.

Of the bondage he had known nothing before, too. And he didn’t like it when the man-animals went on; for a tiny man-animal took the other end of a stick the she-wolf had been tied to, and led her behind him, and behind her followed White Fang, greatly worried by this new adventure.

They went down the valley of the stream, until they came to the end of the valley, where the stream ran into the Mackenzie River. Here a camp was made; and White Fang looked on with wondering eyes. The superiority of these man-animals increased with every moment. But greater than everything else seemed to the wolf-cub their power over things not alive. They made tepees, and canoes, and could dry fish.

At first tepees frightened him. He saw the women and children passing in and out of them without harm, and he saw the dogs trying often to get into them, and being driven away with sharp words and flying stones. After a time, he left Kiche’s side and crawled cautiously toward the wall of the nearest tepee. It was the curiosity of growth that made him move. At last his nose touched the canvas. He waited. Nothing happened. Then he smelled the strange fabric, saturated with the man-smell. He closed on the canvas with his teeth and gave a gentle tug. Nothing happened. He tugged harder. There was a greater movement. It was delightful. He tugged still harder, until the whole tepee was in motion. Then he heard a sharp woman’s cry from inside and ran back to Kiche. But after that he was afraid no more.

A moment later he was running away again from his mother. Her stick was tied to a stake in the ground and she could not follow him. A part-grown puppy, somewhat larger and older than he, came toward him slowly, with some importance. The puppy’s name, as White Fang afterward heard, was Lip-lip. He had lived his life in camp and had fought many puppy fights. Three times, four times, and half a dozen times, his sharp little teeth scored on the newcomer, until White Fang, crying shamelessly, fled to the protection of his mother. It was the first of the many fights he was to have with Lip-lip, for they were enemies from the start.

Kiche licked White Fang soothingly with her tongue, and tried to make him remain with her. But several minutes later he was looking for a new adventure. He came upon one of the man-animals, Grey Beaver, who was rubbing his hams and doing something with sticks and dry moss spread before him on the ground. White Fang came near to him and watched.

Women and children were carrying more sticks and branches to Grey Beaver. White Fang came in until he touched Grey Beaver’s knee, so curious was he. Suddenly he saw a strange thing like mist beginning to arise from the sticks and moss. Then there appeared a live moving thing, of the colour of the sun in the sky. White Fang knew nothing about fire. It drew him, as the light in the mouth of the cave had drawn him in his early puppyhood. Then his nose touched the flame, and at the same instant his little tongue went out to it.

For a moment he was paralysed. The unknown, lurking in the midst of the sticks and moss, was savagely holding him by the nose. He jumped backward, with an astonished explosion of ki-yi’s. At the sound, Kiche leaped snarling to the end of her stick, but could not come to his aid. But Grey Beaver laughed loudly, and then everybody was laughing. But White Fang sat on his haunches and ki-yi’d and ki-yi’d, a forgotten little figure among the man-animals.

It was the worst hurt he had ever known. Both nose and tongue had been hurt by the live thing, sun-coloured, that had grown up under Grey Beaver’s hands. He cried and cried, and every new squeal was met by bursts of laughter. He tried to soothe his nose with his tongue, but the tongue was burnt too, and the two hurts coming together produced greater hurt; so he cried more hopelessly and helplessly than ever.

And he felt shame that the man-animals were laughing at him. He turned and fled away, not from the hurt of the fire, but from the laughter that sank even deeper, and hurt in the spirit of him. And he fled to Kiche, the one creature in the world who was not laughing at him.

Night came on, and White Fang lay by his mother’s side. His nose and tongue still hurt, but there was a greater trouble. He was homesick. He felt a need for the stream and their cave. Life had become too populous. There were so many of the man-animals, men, women, and children. And there were the dogs. The calm loneliness of the only life he had known was gone.

He watched the man-animals coming and going and moving about the camp.

They were fire-makers! They were gods.

During the time that Kiche was tied by the stick, White Fang ran about over all the camp. He quickly came to know much about the man-animals. It was easy to believe they were gods. As his mother, Kiche, had showed her loyalty to them at the first cry of her name, so he was beginning to render his loyalty. When they walked, he got out of their way. When they called, he came. When they commanded him to go, he went away. For behind any wish of theirs was power to enforce that wish, power that hurt, power that expressed itself hits and clubs, in flying stones and whips.

He belonged to them as all dogs belonged to them. Such was the lesson that he learnt in the camp. It came hard. It was a placing of his destiny in another’s hands.

But it did not all happen in a day, this giving over of himself, body and soul, to the man-animals. There were days when he went to the edge of the forest and stood and listened to something calling him far and away. And always he returned, restless and uncomfortable, to whimper softly and wistfully at Kiche’s side and to lick her face with eager, questioning tongue.