<h3>CHAPTER III—THE REIGN OF HATE</h3>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>The men outside shouted and applauded, while Beauty Smith, in an
ecstasy of delight, gloated over the ripping and mangling 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
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