CHAPTER V--THE COVENANT
When December was well along, Grey Beaver went on a journey up theMackenzie. Mit-sah and Kloo-kooch went with him. One sled he drovehimself, drawn by dogs he had traded for or borrowed. A second andsmaller sled was driven by Mit-sah, and to this was harnessed a team ofpuppies. It was more of a toy affair than anything else, yet it was thedelight of Mit-sah, who felt that he was beginning to do a man's work inthe world. Also, he was learning to drive dogs and to train dogs; whilethe puppies themselves were being broken in to the harness. Furthermore,the sled was of some service, for it carried nearly two hundred pounds ofoutfit and food.
White Fang had seen the camp-dogs toiling in the harness, so that he didnot resent overmuch the first placing of the harness upon himself. Abouthis neck was put a moss-stuffed collar, which was connected by twopulling-traces to a strap that passed around his chest and over his back.It was to this that was fastened the long rope by which he pulled at thesled.
There were seven puppies in the team. The others had been born earlierin the year and were nine and ten months old, while White Fang was onlyeight months old. Each dog was fastened to the sled by a single rope. Notwo ropes were of the same length, while the difference in length betweenany two ropes was at least that of a dog's body. Every rope was broughtto a ring at the front end of the sled. The sled itself was withoutrunners, being a birch-bark toboggan, with upturned forward end to keepit from ploughing under the snow. This construction enabled the weightof the sled and load to be distributed over the largest snow-surface; forthe snow was crystal-powder and very soft. Observing the same principleof widest distribution of weight, the dogs at the ends of their ropesradiated fan-fashion from the nose of the sled, so that no dog trod inanother's footsteps.
There was, furthermore, another virtue in the fan-formation. The ropesof varying length prevented the dogs attacking from the rear those thatran in front of them. For a dog to attack another, it would have to turnupon one at a shorter rope. In which case it would find itself face toface with the dog attacked, and also it would find itself facing the whipof the driver. But the most peculiar virtue of all lay in the fact thatthe dog that strove to attack one in front of him must pull the sledfaster, and that the faster the sled travelled, the faster could the dogattacked run away. Thus, the dog behind could never catch up with theone in front. The faster he ran, the faster ran the one he was after,and the faster ran all the dogs. Incidentally, the sled went faster, andthus, by cunning indirection, did man increase his mastery over thebeasts.
Mit-sah resembled his father, much of whose grey wisdom he possessed. Inthe past he had observed Lip-lip's persecution of White Fang; but at thattime Lip-lip was another man's dog, and Mit-sah had never dared more thanto shy an occasional stone at him. But now Lip-lip was his dog, and heproceeded to wreak his vengeance on him by putting him at the end of thelongest rope. This made Lip-lip the leader, and was apparently anhonour! but in reality it took away from him all honour, and instead ofbeing bully and master of the pack, he now found himself hated andpersecuted by the pack.
Because he ran at the end of the longest rope, the dogs had always theview of him running away before them. All that they saw of him was hisbushy tail and fleeing hind legs--a view far less ferocious andintimidating than his bristling mane and gleaming fangs. Also, dogsbeing so constituted in their mental ways, the sight of him running awaygave desire to run after him and a feeling that he ran away from them.
The moment the sled started, the team took after Lip-lip in a chase thatextended throughout the day. At first he had been prone to turn upon hispursuers, jealous of his dignity and wrathful; but at such times Mit-sahwould throw the stinging lash of the thirty-foot cariboo-gut whip intohis face and compel him to turn tail and run on. Lip-lip might face thepack, but he could not face that whip, and all that was left him to dowas to keep his long rope taut and his flanks ahead of the teeth of hismates.
But a still greater cunning lurked in the recesses of the Indian mind. Togive point to unending pursuit of the leader, Mit-sah favoured him overthe other dogs. These favours aroused in them jealousy and hatred. Intheir presence Mit-sah would give him meat and would give it to him only.This was maddening to them. They would rage around just outside thethrowing-distance of the whip, while Lip-lip devoured the meat and Mit-sah protected him. And when there was no meat to give, Mit-sah wouldkeep the team at a distance and make believe to give meat to Lip-lip.
White Fang took kindly to the work. He had travelled a greater distancethan the other dogs in the yielding of himself to the rule of the gods,and he had learned more thoroughly the futility of opposing their will.In addition, the persecution he had suffered from the pack had made thepack less to him in the scheme of things, and man more. He had notlearned to be dependent on his kind for companionship. Besides, Kichewas well-nigh forgotten; and the chief outlet of expression that remainedto him was in the allegiance he tendered the gods he had accepted asmasters. So he worked hard, learned discipline, and was obedient.Faithfulness and willingness characterised his toil. These are essentialtraits of the wolf and the wild-dog when they have become domesticated,and these traits White Fang possessed in unusual measure.
A companionship did exist between White Fang and the other dogs, but itwas one of warfare and enmity. He had never learned to play with them.He knew only how to fight, and fight with them he did, returning to thema hundred-fold the snaps and slashes they had given him in the days whenLip-lip was leader of the pack. But Lip-lip was no longer leader--exceptwhen he fled away before his mates at the end of his rope, the sledbounding along behind. In camp he kept close to Mit-sah or Grey Beaveror Kloo-kooch. He did not dare venture away from the gods, for now thefangs of all dogs were against him, and he tasted to the dregs thepersecution that had been White Fang's.
With the overthrow of Lip-lip, White Fang could have become leader of thepack. But he was too morose and solitary for that. He merely thrashedhis team-mates. Otherwise he ignored them. They got out of his way whenhe came along; nor did the boldest of them ever dare to rob him of hismeat. On the contrary, they devoured their own meat hurriedly, for fearthat he would take it away from them. White Fang knew the law well: _tooppress the weak and obey the strong_. He ate his share of meat asrapidly as he could. And then woe the dog that had not yet finished! Asnarl and a flash of fangs, and that dog would wail his indignation tothe uncomforting stars while White Fang finished his portion for him.
Every little while, however, one dog or another would flame up in revoltand be promptly subdued. Thus White Fang was kept in training. He wasjealous of the isolation in which he kept himself in the midst of thepack, and he fought often to maintain it. But such fights were of briefduration. He was too quick for the others. They were slashed open andbleeding before they knew what had happened, were whipped almost beforethey had begun to fight.
As rigid as the sled-discipline of the gods, was the disciplinemaintained by White Fang amongst his fellows. He never allowed them anylatitude. He compelled them to an unremitting respect for him. Theymight do as they pleased amongst themselves. That was no concern of his.But it _was_ his concern that they leave him alone in his isolation, getout of his way when he elected to walk among them, and at all timesacknowledge his mastery over them. A hint of stiff-leggedness on theirpart, a lifted lip or a bristle of hair, and he would be upon them,merciless and cruel, swiftly convincing them of the error of their way.
He was a monstrous tyrant. His mastery was rigid as steel. He oppressedthe weak with a vengeance. Not for nothing had he been exposed to thepitiless struggles for life in the day of his cubhood, when his motherand he, alone and unaided, held their own and survived in the ferociousenvironment of the Wild. And not for nothing had he learned to walksoftly when superior strength went by. He oppressed the weak, but herespected the strong. And in the course of the long journey with GreyBeaver he walked softly indeed amongst the full-grown dogs in the campsof the str
ange man-animals they encountered.
The months passed by. Still continued the journey of Grey Beaver. WhiteFang's strength was developed by the long hours on trail and the steadytoil at the sled; and it would have seemed that his mental developmentwas well-nigh complete. He had come to know quite thoroughly the worldin which he lived. His outlook was bleak and materialistic. The worldas he saw it was a fierce and brutal world, a world without warmth, aworld in which caresses and affection and the bright sweetnesses of thespirit did not exist.
He had no affection for Grey Beaver. True, he was a god, but a mostsavage god. White Fang was glad to acknowledge his lordship, but it wasa lordship based upon superior intelligence and brute strength. Therewas something in the fibre of White Fang's being that made his lordship athing to be desired, else he would not have come back from the Wild whenhe did to tender his allegiance. There were deeps in his nature whichhad never been sounded. A kind word, a caressing touch of the hand, onthe part of Grey Beaver, might have sounded these deeps; but Grey Beaverdid not caress, nor speak kind words. It was not his way. His primacywas savage, and savagely he ruled, administering justice with a club,punishing transgression with the pain of a blow, and rewarding merit, notby kindness, but by withholding a blow.
So White Fang knew nothing of the heaven a man's hand might contain forhim. Besides, he did not like the hands of the man-animals. He wassuspicious of them. It was true that they sometimes gave meat, but moreoften they gave hurt. Hands were things to keep away from. They hurledstones, wielded sticks and clubs and whips, administered slaps andclouts, and, when they touched him, were cunning to hurt with pinch andtwist and wrench. In strange villages he had encountered the hands ofthe children and learned that they were cruel to hurt. Also, he had oncenearly had an eye poked out by a toddling papoose. From theseexperiences he became suspicious of all children. He could not toleratethem. When they came near with their ominous hands, he got up.
It was in a village at the Great Slave Lake, that, in the course ofresenting the evil of the hands of the man-animals, he came to modify thelaw that he had learned from Grey Beaver: namely, that the unpardonablecrime was to bite one of the gods. In this village, after the custom ofall dogs in all villages, White Fang went foraging, for food. A boy waschopping frozen moose-meat with an axe, and the chips were flying in thesnow. White Fang, sliding by in quest of meat, stopped and began to eatthe chips. He observed the boy lay down the axe and take up a stoutclub. White Fang sprang clear, just in time to escape the descendingblow. The boy pursued him, and he, a stranger in the village, fledbetween two tepees to find himself cornered against a high earth bank.
There was no escape for White Fang. The only way out was between the twotepees, and this the boy guarded. Holding his club prepared to strike,he drew in on his cornered quarry. White Fang was furious. He faced theboy, bristling and snarling, his sense of justice outraged. He knew thelaw of forage. All the wastage of meat, such as the frozen chips,belonged to the dog that found it. He had done no wrong, broken no law,yet here was this boy preparing to give him a beating. White Fangscarcely knew what happened. He did it in a surge of rage. And he didit so quickly that the boy did not know either. All the boy knew wasthat he had in some unaccountable way been overturned into the snow, andthat his club-hand had been ripped wide open by White Fang's teeth.
But White Fang knew that he had broken the law of the gods. He haddriven his teeth into the sacred flesh of one of them, and could expectnothing but a most terrible punishment. He fled away to Grey Beaver,behind whose protecting legs he crouched when the bitten boy and theboy's family came, demanding vengeance. But they went away withvengeance unsatisfied. Grey Beaver defended White Fang. So did Mit-sahand Kloo-kooch. White Fang, listening to the wordy war and watching theangry gestures, knew that his act was justified. And so it came that helearned there were gods and gods. There were his gods, and there wereother gods, and between them there was a difference. Justice orinjustice, it was all the same, he must take all things from the hands ofhis own gods. But he was not compelled to take injustice from the othergods. It was his privilege to resent it with his teeth. And this alsowas a law of the gods.
Before the day was out, White Fang was to learn more about this law. Mit-sah, alone, gathering firewood in the forest, encountered the boy thathad been bitten. With him were other boys. Hot words passed. Then allthe boys attacked Mit-sah. It was going hard with him. Blows wereraining upon him from all sides. White Fang looked on at first. Thiswas an affair of the gods, and no concern of his. Then he realised thatthis was Mit-sah, one of his own particular gods, who was beingmaltreated. It was no reasoned impulse that made White Fang do what hethen did. A mad rush of anger sent him leaping in amongst thecombatants. Five minutes later the landscape was covered with fleeingboys, many of whom dripped blood upon the snow in token that White Fang'steeth had not been idle. When Mit-sah told the story in camp, GreyBeaver ordered meat to be given to White Fang. He ordered much meat tobe given, and White Fang, gorged and sleepy by the fire, knew that thelaw had received its verification.
It was in line with these experiences that White Fang came to learn thelaw of property and the duty of the defence of property. From theprotection of his god's body to the protection of his god's possessionswas a step, and this step he made. What was his god's was to be defendedagainst all the world--even to the extent of biting other gods. Not onlywas such an act sacrilegious in its nature, but it was fraught withperil. The gods were all-powerful, and a dog was no match against them;yet White Fang learned to face them, fiercely belligerent and unafraid.Duty rose above fear, and thieving gods learned to leave Grey Beaver'sproperty alone.
One thing, in this connection, White Fang quickly learnt, and that wasthat a thieving god was usually a cowardly god and prone to run away atthe sounding of the alarm. Also, he learned that but brief time elapsedbetween his sounding of the alarm and Grey Beaver coming to his aid. Hecame to know that it was not fear of him that drove the thief away, butfear of Grey Beaver. White Fang did not give the alarm by barking. Henever barked. His method was to drive straight at the intruder, and tosink his teeth in if he could. Because he was morose and solitary,having nothing to do with the other dogs, he was unusually fitted toguard his master's property; and in this he was encouraged and trained byGrey Beaver. One result of this was to make White Fang more ferociousand indomitable, and more solitary.
The months went by, binding stronger and stronger the covenant betweendog and man. This was the ancient covenant that the first wolf that camein from the Wild entered into with man. And, like all succeeding wolvesand wild dogs that had done likewise, White Fang worked the covenant outfor himself. The terms were simple. For the possession of a flesh-and-blood god, he exchanged his own liberty. Food and fire, protection andcompanionship, were some of the things he received from the god. Inreturn, he guarded the god's property, defended his body, worked for him,and obeyed him.
The possession of a god implies service. White Fang's was a service ofduty and awe, but not of love. He did not know what love was. He had noexperience of love. Kiche was a remote memory. Besides, not only had heabandoned the Wild and his kind when he gave himself up to man, but theterms of the covenant were such that if ever he met Kiche again he wouldnot desert his god to go with her. His allegiance to man seemed somehowa law of his being greater than the love of liberty, of kind and kin.