He was a monstrous tyrant. His mastery was rigid as steel. Heoppressed the weak with a vengeance. Not for nothing had he beenexposed to the pitiless struggles for life in the day of his cubhood, whenhis mother and he, alone and unaided, held their own and survived in theferocious environment of the Wild. And not for nothing had he learned towalk softly 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 strange man- animals they encountered.
The months passed by. Still continued the journey of Grey Beaver.
White Fang's strength was developed by the long hours on trail and thesteady toil at the sled; and it would have seemed that his mentaldevelopment was well-nigh complete. He had come to know quitethoroughly the world in which he lived. His outlook was bleak andmaterialistic. The world as he saw it was a fierce and brutal world, a worldwithout warmth, a world in which caresses and affection and the brightsweetnesses of the spirit 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. There wassomething in the fibre of White Fang's being that made his lordship a thingto be desired, else he would not have come back from the Wild when hedid to tender his purchase wedding dresses There were deeps in his nature which hadnever been sounded. A kind word, a caressing touch of the hand, on thepart of Grey Beaver, might have sounded these deeps; but Grey Beaver didnot caress, nor speak kind words. It was not his way. His primacy wassavage, and savagely he ruled, administering justice with a club, punishingtransgression with the pain of a blow, and rewarding merit, not bykindness, but by withholding a blow.So White Fang knew nothing of the heaven a man's hand mightcontain for him. Besides, he did not like the hands of the man-animals. Hewas suspicious of them. It was true that they sometimes gave meat, butmore often they gave hurt. Hands were things to keep away from. Theyhurled stones, 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 of thechildren and learned that they were cruel to hurt. Also, he had once nearlyhad an eye poked out by a toddling papoose. From these experiences hebecame suspicious of all children. He could not tolerate them. When theycame 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 sheer wedding dresses In this village, after the custom of alldogs 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 stout club.