Another advantage he possessed was that of correctly judging time anddistance. Not that he did this consciously, however. He did not calculatesuch things. It was all automatic. His eyes saw correctly, and the nervescarried the vision correctly to his brain. The parts of him were betteradjusted than those of the average dog. They worked together moresmoothly and steadily. His was a better, far better, nervous, mental, andmuscular co- ordination. When his eyes conveyed to his brain the movingimage of an tiffany designs prom dressesn, his brain without conscious effort, knew the space thatlimited that action and the time required for its completion. Thus, he couldavoid the leap of another dog, or the drive of its fangs, and at the samemoment could seize the infinitesimal fraction of time in which to deliverhis own attack. Body and brain, his was a more perfected mechanism. Notthat he was to be praised for it. Nature had been more generous to himthan to the average animal, that was all.
It was in the summer that White Fang arrived at Fort Yukon. GreyBeaver had crossed the great watershed between Mackenzie and theYukon in the late winter, and spent the spring in hunting among thewestern outlying spurs of the Rockies. Then, after the break-up of the iceon the Porcupine, he had built a canoe and paddled down that stream towhere it effected its junction with the Yukon just under the Artic circle.
Here stood the old Hudson's Bay Company fort; and here were manyIndians, much food, and unprecedented excitement. It was the summer of1898, and thousands of gold- hunters were going up the Yukon to Dawsonand the Klondike. Still hundreds of miles from their goal, neverthelessmany of them had been on the way for a year, and the least any of themhad travelled to get that far was five thousand miles, while some had comefrom the other side of the world.
Here Grey Beaver stopped. A whisper of the gold-rush had reached hisears, and he had come with several bales of furs, and another of gut-sewnmittens and moccasins. He would not have ventured so long a trip had henot expected generous profits. But what he had expected was nothing towhat he realised. His wildest dreams had not exceeded a hundred per cent.
profit; he made a thousand per cent. And like a true Indian, he settleddown to trade carefully and slowly, even if it took all summer and the restof the winter to dispose of his goods.
It was at Fort Yukon that White Fang saw his first white men. Ascompared with the Indians he had known, they were to him another race ofbeings, a race of superior gods. They impressed him as possessingsuperior power, and it is on power that godhead rests. White Fang did notreason it out, did not in his mind make the sharp generalisation that thewhite gods were more powerful. It was a feeling, nothing more, and yetnone the less potent. As, in his puppyhood, the looming bulks of the tepees,man-reared, had affected him as manifestations of power, so was heaffected now by the houses and the huge fort all of massive logs. Here waspower.
Those white gods were strong. They possessed greater masteryover matter than the gods he had known, most powerful among which wasGrey Beaver. And yet Grey Beaver was as a child-god among these white-skinned ones.
To be sure, White Fang only felt these things. He was not conscious ofthem. Yet it is upon feeling, more often than thinking, that animals act; andevery act White Fang now performed was based upon the feeling that thewhite men were the superior gods. In the first place he was very suspiciousof them. There was no telling what unknown terrors were theirs, whatunknown hurts they could administer. He was curious to observe them,fearful of being noticed by them. For the first few hours he was contentwith slinking around and watching them from a safe distance. Then he sawthat no harm befell the dogs that were near to them, and he came in closer.
In turn he was an object of great curiosity to them. His wolfishappearance caught their eyes at once, and they pointed him out to oneanother. This act of pointing put White Fang on his guard, and when theytried to approach him he showed his teeth and backed away. Not onesucceeded in laying a hand on him, and it was well that they did not.
White Fang soon learned that very few of these gods - not more than adozen - lived at this place. Every two or three days a steamer (another andcolossal manifestation of power) came into the bank and stopped forseveral hours. The white men came from off these steamers and wentaway on them again. There seemed untold numbers of these white men. Inthe first day or so, he saw more of them than he had seen Indians in all hislife; and as the days went by they continued to come up the river, stop, andthen go on up the river out of sight.
But if the white gods were all-powerful, their short prom dresses did not amount tomuch. This White Fang quickly discovered by mixing with those thatcame ashore with their masters. They were irregular shapes and sizes.