1906 white fang jack london - pinkmonke - Pink Monkey

CHAPTER SIX.
The Famine.
92
THE SPRING OF THE YEAR was at hand when Gray Beaver
finished his long journey. It was April, and White Fang was a year
old when he pulled into the home village and was loosed from the
harness by Mit-sah. Though a long way from his full growth,
White Fang, next to Lip-lip, was the largest yearling in the village.
Both from his father, the wolf, and from Kiche, he had inherited
stature and strength, and already he was measuring up alongside
the full-grown dogs.
But he had not yet grown compact. His body was slender and
rangy, and his strength more stringy than massive. His coat was
the true wolf-gray, and to all appearances he was true wolf
himself. The quarter-strain of dog he had inherited from Kiche had
left no mark on him physically, though it played its part in his
mental make-up.
He wandered through the village, recognizing with staid
satisfaction the various gods he had known before the long
journey. Then there were the dogs, puppies growing up like
himself, and grown dogs that did not look so large and formidable
as the memory-pictures he retained of them. Also, he stood less in
fear of them than formerly, stalking among them with a certain
careless case that was as new to him as it was enjoyable.
There was Baseek, a grizzled old fellow that in his younger days
had but to uncover his fangs to send White Fang cringing and
crouching to the right-about.
From him White Fang had learned much of his own insignificance;
and from him he was now to learn much of the change and
development that had taken place in himself. While Baseek had
been growing weaker with age, White Fang had been growing
stronger with youth.
It was at the cutting-up of a moose, fresh-killed, that White Fang
learned of the changed relations in which he stood to the dogworld.
He had got for himself a hoof and part of the shin-bone, to
which quite a bit of meat was attached. Withdrawn from the
immediate scramble of the other dogs- in fact, out of sight behind a
thicket- he was devouring his prize, when Baseek rushed in upon
him. Before he knew what he was doing, he had slashed the
intruder twice and sprung clear.