1906 white fang jack london - pinkmonke - Pink Monkey

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menace, and hurt, and is hated accordingly. White Fang’s feel of
Beauty Smith was bad. From the man’s distorted body and twisted
mind, in occult ways, like mists rising from malarial marshes, come
emanations of the unhealth within. Not by reasoning, not by the
five senses alone, but by other and remoter and uncharted senses,
came the feeling to White Fang that the man was ominous with
evil, pregnant with hurtfulness, and therefore a thing bad, and
wisely to be hated.
White Fang was in Gray Beaver’s camp when Beauty Smith first
visited it. At the faint sound of his distant feet, before he came in
sight, White Fang knew who was coming and began to bristle. He
had been lying down in an abandon of comfort, but he arose
quickly, and as the man arrived, slid away in true wolf-fashion to
the edge of the camp. He did not know what they said, but he
could see the man and Gray Beaver talking together. Once, the man
pointed at him, and White Fang snarled back as though the hand
was just descending upon him instead of being, as it was, fifty feet
away. The man laughed at this; and White Fang slunk away to the
sheltering woods, his head turned to observe as he glided softly
over the ground.
Gray Beaver refused to sell the dog. He had grown rich with his
trading and stood in need of nothing. Besides, White Fang was a
valuable animal, the strongest sled-dog he had ever owned, and
the best leader. Furthermore, there was no dog like him on the
Mackenzie nor the Yukon. He could fight. He killed other dogs as
easily as men killed mosquitoes. (Beauty Smith’s eyes lighted up at
this, and he licked his thin lips with an eager tongue.) No, White
Fang was not for sale at any price.
But Beauty Smith knew the ways of Indians. He visited Gray
Beaver’s camp often, and hidden under his coat was always a black
bottle or so. One of the potencies of whiskey is the breeding of
thirst. Gray Beaver got the thirst. His fevered membranes and
burnt stomach began to clamor for more and more of the scorching
fluid; while his brain, thrust all awry by the unwonted stimulant,
permitted him to go any length to obtain it. The money he had
received for his furs and mittens and moccasins began to go. It
went faster and faster, and the shorter his money-sack grew, the
shorter grew his temper.
In the end his money and goods and temper were all gone.
Nothing remained to him but his thirst, a prodigious possession in
itself that grew more prodigious with every sober breath he drew.
Then it was that Beauty Smith had talk with him again about the
sale of White Fang; but this time the price offered was in bottles,
not dollars, and Gray Beaver’s ears were more eager to hear.