him of expressing the life that was in him. Tormented,
incited to hate, he was kept a prisoner so that there was no way of
satisfying that hate except at the times his master saw fit to put
another dog against him. Beauty Smith had estimated his powers well, for
he was invariably the victor. One day, three dogs were turned in upon
him in succession. Another day a full-grown wolf, fresh-caught from the
Wild, was shoved in through the door of the pen. And on still another
day two dogs were set against him at the same time. This was his
severest fight, and though in the end he killed them both he was himself
half killed in doing it.

In the fall of the year, when the first snows were falling and mush-ice
was running in the river, Beauty Smith took passage for himself and White
Fang on a steamboat bound up the Yukon to Dawson. White Fang had now
achieved a reputation in the land. As "the Fighting Wolf" he was known
far and wide, and the cage in which he was kept on the steam-boat's deck
was usually surrounded by curious men. He raged and snarled at them, or
lay quietly and studied them with cold hatred. Why should he not hate
them? He never asked himself the question. He knew only hate and lost
himself in the passion of it. Life had become a hell to him. He had not
been made for the close confinement wild beasts endure at the hands of
men. And yet it was in precisely this way that he was treated. Men
stared at him, poked sticks between the bars to make him snarl, and then
laughed at him.

They were his environment, these men, and they were moulding the clay of
him into a more ferocious thing than had been intended by Nature.
Nevertheless, Nature had given him plasticity. Where many another animal
would have died or had its spirit broken, he adjusted himself and lived,
and at no expense of the spirit. Possibly Beauty Smith, arch-fiend and
tormentor, was capable of breaking White Fang's spirit, but as yet there
were no signs of his succeeding.

If Beauty Smith had in him a devil, White Fang had another; and the two
of them raged against each other unceasingly. In the days before, White
Fang had had the wisdom to cower down and submit to a man with a club in
his hand; but this wisdom now left him. The mere sight of Beauty Smith
was sufficient to send him into transports of fury. And when they came
to close quarters, and he had been beaten back by the club, he went on
growling and snarling, and showing hi