was due to the weariness of the slender neck, unable properly
to support so great a burden.

This jaw gave the impression of ferocious determination. But something
lacked. Perhaps it was from excess. Perhaps the jaw was too large. At
any rate, it was a lie. Beauty Smith was known far and wide as the
weakest of weak-kneed and snivelling cowards. To complete his
description, his teeth were large and yellow, while the two eye-teeth,
larger than their fellows, showed under his lean lips like fangs. His
eyes were yellow and muddy, as though Nature had run short on pigments
and squeezed together the dregs of all her tubes. It was the same with
his hair, sparse and irregular of growth, muddy-yellow and dirty-yellow,
rising on his head and sprouting out of his face in unexpected tufts and
bunches, in appearance like clumped and wind-blown grain.

In short, Beauty Smith was a monstrosity, and the blame of it lay
elsewhere. He was not responsible. The clay of him had been so moulded
in the making. He did the cooking for the other men in the fort, the
dish-washing and the drudgery. They did not despise him. Rather did
they tolerate him in a broad human way, as one tolerates any creature
evilly treated in the making. Also, they feared him. His cowardly rages
made them dread a shot in the back or poison in their coffee. But
somebody had to do the cooking, and whatever else his shortcomings,
Beauty Smith could cook.

This was the man that looked at White Fang, delighted in his ferocious
prowess, and desired to possess him. He made overtures to White Fang
from the first. White Fang began by ignoring him. Later on, when the
overtures became more insistent, White Fang bristled and bared his teeth
and backed away. He did not like the man. The feel of him was bad. He
sensed the evil in him, and feared the extended hand and the attempts at
soft-spoken speech. Because of all this, he hated the man.

With the simpler creatures, good and bad are things simply understood.
The good stands for all things that bring easement and satisfaction and
surcease from pain. Therefore, the good is liked. The bad stands for
all things that are fraught with discomfort, 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, came emanations of the unhealth within. Not by
reasoning, not by the f