1906 white fang jack london - pinkmonke - Pink Monkey

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close quarters was his to an unusual degree. He could not endure a
prolonged contact with another body. It smacked of danger. It
made him frantic. He must be away, free, on his own legs,
touching no living things. It was the Wild still clinging to him,
asserting itself through him.
This feeling had been accentuated by the Ishmaelite life he had led
from his pup- pyhood. Danger lurked in contacts. It was the trap,
ever the trap, the fear of it lurking deep in the life of him, woven in
the fibre of him.
In consequence, the strange dogs he encountered had no chance
against him.
He eluded their fangs. He got them, or got away, himself
untouched in either event. In the natural course of things there
were exceptions to this. There were times when several dogs,
pitching onto him, punished him before he could get away; and
there were times when a single dog scored deeply on him. But
these were accidents. In the main, so efficient a fighter had he
become, he went his way unscathed.
Another advantage he possessed was that of correctly judging time
and distance. Not that he did this consciously, however. He did not
calculate such things.
It was all automatic. His eyes saw correctly, and the nerves carried
the vision correctly to his brain. The parts of him were better
adjusted than those of the average dog. They worked together
more smoothly and steadily. His was a better, far better, nervous,
mental, and muscular coordination. When his eyes conveyed to his
brain the moving image of an action, his brain, without conscious
effort, knew the space that limited that action and the time
required for its completion.
Thus, he could avoid the leap of another dog, or the drive of its
fangs, and at the same moment could seize the infinitesimal
fraction of time in which to deliver his own attack. Body and brain,
his was a more perfected mechanism. Not that he was to be praised
for it. Nature had been more generous to him than to the average
animal, that was all.
It was in the summer that White Fang arrived at Fort Yukon. Gray
Beaver had crossed the great water-shed between the Mackenzie
and the Yukon in the late winter, and spent the spring in hunting
among the western outlying spurs of the Rockies. Then, after the
break-up of the ice on the Porcupine, he had built a canoe and
paddled down that stream to where it effected its junction with the
Yukon just under the Arctic Circle. Here stood the old Hudson’s
Bay Company fort; and here were many Indians, much food, and
unprecedented excitement. It was the summer of 1898, and