The cub, who had thus received a name in the world, lay and watched.
For a time the man-animals continued to make their mouth-noises. Then
Grey Beaver took a knife from a sheath that hung around his neck, and
went into the thicket and cut a stick. White Fang watched him. He
notched the stick at each end and in the notches fastened strings of
raw-hide. One string he tied around the throat of Kiche. Then he led
her to a small pine, around which he tied the other string.
White Fang followed and lay down beside her. Salmon Tongue’s hand
reached out to him and rolled him over on his back. Kiche looked on
anxiously. White Fang felt fear mounting in him again. He could not
quite suppress a snarl, but he made no offer to snap. The hand, with
fingers crooked and spread apart, rubbed his stomach in a playful way
and rolled him from side to side. It was ridiculous and ungainly, lying
there on his back with legs sprawling in the air. Besides, it was a
position of such utter helplessness that White Fang’s whole nature
revolted against it. He could do nothing to defend himself. If this
man-animal intended harm, White Fang knew that he could not escape it.
How could he spring away with his four legs in the air above him? Yet
submission made him master his fear, and he only growled softly. This
growl he could not suppress; nor did the man-animal resent it by giving
him a blow on the head. And furthermore, such was the strangeness of
it, White Fang experienced an unaccountable sensation of pleasure as
the hand rubbed back and forth. When he was rolled on his side he
ceased to growl, when the fingers pressed and prodded at the base of
his ears the pleasurable sensation increased; and when, with a final
rub and scratch, the man left him alone and went away, all fear had
died out of White Fang. He was to know fear many times in his dealing
with man; yet it was a token of the fearless companionship with man
that was ultimately to be his.
After a time, White Fang heard strange noises approaching. He was quick
in his classification, for he knew them at once for man-animal noises.
A few minutes later the remainder of the tribe, strung out as it was on
the march, trailed in. There were more men and many women and children,
forty souls of them, and all heavily burdened with camp equipage and
outfit. Also there were many dogs; and these, with the exception of the
part-grown puppies, were likewise burdened with camp outfit. On their
backs, in bags that fastened tightly around underneath, the dogs
carried from twenty to thirty pounds of weight.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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