This lasted several minutes, and White Fang was beginning to enjoy it, as a sort of game.But suddenly, with remarkable swiftness, Lip-lip leaped in, delivered a slashing snap, and leaped away again.The snap had taken effect on the shoulder that had been hurt by the lynx and that was still sore deep down near the bone.The surprise and hurt of it brought a yelp out of White Fang; but the next moment, in a rush of anger, he was upon Lip-lip and snapping viciously.
But Lip-lip 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, yelping 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, born so, with natures destined perpetually to clash.
Kiche licked White Fang soothingly with her tongue, and tried to prevail upon him to remain with her.But his curiosity was rampant, and several minutes later he was venturing forth on a new quest.He came upon one of the man-animals, Gray Beaver, who was squatting on his hams and doing something with sticks and dry moss spread before him on the ground.White Fang came near to him and watched.Gray Beaver made mouth-noises which White Fang interpreted as not hostile, so he came still nearer.
Women and children were carrying more sticks and branches to Gray Beaver.
It was evidently an affair of moment.White Fang came in until he touched Gray Beaver's knee, so curious was he, and already forgetful that this was a terrible man-animal.Suddenly he saw a strange thing like mist beginning to arise from the sticks and moss beneath Gray Beaver's hands.Then, amongst the sticks themselves, appeared a live thing, twisting and turning, of a color like the color 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.He crawled the several steps toward the flame.He heard Gray Beaver chuckle above him, and he knew the sound was not hostile.
Then his nose touched the flame, and at the same instant his little tongue went out to it.
For a moment he was paralyzed.The unknown, lurking in the midst of the sticks and moss, was savagely clutching him by the nose.He scrambled backward, bursting out in an astonished explosion of ki-yi's.At the sound, Kiche leaped snarling to the end of her stick, and there raged terribly because she could not come to his aid.But Gray Beaver laughed loudly, and slapped his thighs, and told the happening to all the rest of the camp, till everybody was laughing uproariously.But White Fang sat on his haunches and ki-yi'd and ki-yi'd, a forlorn and pitiable little figure in the midst of the man-animals.
It was the worst hurt he had ever known.Both nose and tongue had been scorched by the live thing, sun-colored, that had grown up under Gray Beaver's hands.He cried and cried interminably, and every fresh wail was greeted by bursts of laughter on the part of the man-animals.He tried to soothe his nose with his tongue, but the tongue was burnt too, and the two hurts coming together produced greater hurt; whereupon he cried more hopelessly and helplessly than ever.
And then shame came to him.He knew laughter and the meaning of it.
It is not given us to know how some animals know laughter, and know when they are being laughed at; but it was this same way that White Fang knew it.And he felt shame that the man-animals should be 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, raging at the end of her stick like an animal gone mad -- to Kiche, the one creature in the world who was not laughing at him.
Twilight drew down and night came on, and White Fang lay by his mother's side.His nose and tongue still hurt, but he was perplexed by a greater trouble.He was homesick.He felt a vacancy in him, a need for the hush and quietude of the stream and the cave in the cliff.Life had become too populous.There were so many of the man-animals, men, women, and children, all making noises and irritations.And there were the dogs, ever squabbling and bickering, bursting into uproars and creating confusions.The restful loneliness of the only life he had known was gone.Here the very air was palpitant with life.It hummed and buzzed unceasingly.Continually changing its intensity and abruptly variant in pitch, it impinged on his nerves and senses, made him nervous and restless and worried him with a perpetual imminence of happening.
He watched the man-animals, coming and going and moving about the camp.
In fashion distantly resembling the way men look upon the gods they create, so looked White Fang upon the man-animals before him.They were superior creatures, of a verity, gods.To his dim comprehension they were as much wonder-workers as gods are to men.They were creatures of mastery, possessing all manner of unknown and impossible potencies, overlords of the alive and the not alive, -- making obey that which moved, imparting movement to that which did not move, and making life, sun-colored and biting life, to grow out of dead moss and wood.They were fire-makers! They were gods!
