A small number of white men lived in Fort Yukon. These men hadbeen long in the country. They called themselves Sour-doughs, and tookgreat pride in so classifying themselves. For other men, new in the land,they felt nothing but disdain. The men who came ashore from the steamerswere newcomers. They were known as CHECHAQUOS, and they alwayswilted at the application of the name. They made their bread with baking-powder. This was the invidious distinction between them and the Sour-doughs, who, forsooth, made their bread from sour-dough because theyhad no baking-powder.

　　All of which is neither here nor there. The men in the fort disdainedthe newcomers and enjoyed seeing them come to grief. Especially did theyenjoy the havoc worked amongst the newcomers' dogs by White Fang andhis disreputable gang. When a steamer arrived, the men of the fort made ita point always to come down to the bank and see the fun. They lookedforward to it with as much anticipation as did the Indian dogs, while theywere not slow to appreciate the savage and crafty part played by WhiteFang.

　　But there was one man amongst them who particularly enjoyed thesport. He would come running at the first sound of a steamboat's whistle;and when the last fight was over and White Fang and the pack hadscattered, he would return slowly to the fort, his face heavy with regret.

　　Sometimes, when a soft southland dog went down, shrieking its death-cryunder the fangs of the pack, this man would be unable to contain himself,and would leap into the air and cry out with delight. And always he had asharp and covetous eye for White Fang.

　　This man was called "Beauty" by the other men of the fort. No oneknew his first name, and in general he was known in the country as BeautySmith. But he was anything save a beauty. To antithesis was due hisnaming. He was pre-eminently unbeautiful. Nature had been niggardlywith him. He was a small man to begin with; and upon his meagre framewas deposited an even more strikingly meagre head. Its apex might belikened to a point. In fact, in his boyhood, before he had been namedBeauty by his fellows, he had been called "Pinhead."Backward, from the apex, his head slanted down to his neck andforward it slanted uncompromisingly to meet a low and remarkably wideforehead. Beginning here, as though regretting her parsimony, Nature hadspread his features with a lavish hand. His eyes were large, and betweenthem was the distance of two eyes. His face, in relation to the rest of him,was prodigious. In order to discover the necessary area, Nature had givenhim an enormous prognathous jaw. It was wide and heavy, and protrudedoutward and down until it seemed to rest on his chest. Possibly thisappearance was due to the weariness of the slender neck, unable properlyto support so great a burden.

　　This jaw gave the impression of ferocious determination. Butsomething lacked. Perhaps it was from excess. Perhaps the jaw was toolarge. At any rate, it was a lie. Beauty Smith was known far and wide asthe weakest of weak-kneed and snivelling cowards. To complete hisdescription, his teeth were large and yellow, while the two eye-teeth,larger than their fellows, showed under his lean lips like fangs. His eyeswere yellow and muddy, as though Nature had run short on pigments andsqueezed 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 onhis head and sprouting out of his face in unexpected tufts and bunches, inappearance like clumped and wind-blown grain.

　　In short, Beauty Smith was a monstrosity, and the blame of it layelsewhere. He was not responsible. The clay of him had been so mouldedin 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 theytolerate him in a broad human way, as one tolerates any creature evillytreated in the making. Also, they feared him. His cowardly rages madethem dread a shot in the back or poison in their coffee. But somebody hadto do the cooking, and whatever else his shortcomings, Beauty Smithcould cook.

　　This was the man that looked at White Fang, delighted in his ferociousprowess, and desired to possess him. He made overtures to White Fangfrom the first. White Fang began by ignoring him. Later on, when theovertures became more insistent, White Fang bristled and bared his teethand backed away. He did not like the man. The feel of him was bad. Hesensed the evil in him, and feared the extended hand and the attempts atsoft-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 andsurcease from pain. Therefore, the good is liked. The bad stands for allthings that are fraught with discomfort, menace, and hurt, and is hatedaccordingly. White Fang's feel of Beauty Smith was bad. From the man'sdistorted body and twisted mind, in occult ways, like mists rising frommalarial marshes, came emanations of the unhealth within. Not byreasoning, not by the five senses alone, but by other and remoter anduncharted senses, came the feeling to White Fang that the man wasominous with evil, pregnant with hurtfulness, and therefore a thing bad,and wisely to be hated.

　　White Fang was in Grey Beaver's camp when Beauty Smith firstvisited 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 beenlying down in an abandon of comfort, but he arose quickly, and, as theman arrived, slid away in true wolf-fashion to the edge of the camp. Hedid not know what they said, but he could see the man and Grey Beavertalking together. Once, the man pointed at him, and White Fang snarledback as though the hand were just descending upon him instead of being,as it was, fifty feet away. The man laughed at this; and White Fang slunkaway to the sheltering woods, his head turned to observe as he glidedsoftly over the ground.

　　Grey Beaver refused to sell the dog. He had grown rich with histrading and stood in need of nothing. Besides, White Fang was a valuableanimal, 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 aneager tongue). No, White Fang was not for sale at any price.

　　But Beauty Smith knew the ways of Indians. He visited Grey Beaver'scamp often, and hidden under his coat was always a black bottle or so.

　　One of the potencies of whisky is the breeding of thirst. Grey Beaver gotthe thirst. His fevered membranes and burnt stomach began to clamour formore and more of the scorching fluid; while his brain, thrust all awry bythe unwonted stimulant, permitted him to go any length to obtain it. Themoney 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 shortergrew his temper.

　　In the end his money and goods and temper were all gone. Nothingremained to him but his thirst, a prodigious possession in itself that grewmore prodigious with every sober breath he drew. Then it was that BeautySmith had talk with him again about the sale of White Fang; but this timethe price offered was in bottles, not dollars, and Grey Beaver's ears weremore eager to hear.

　　"You ketch um dog you take um all right," was his last word.

　　The bottles were delivered, but after two days. "You ketch um dog,"were Beauty Smith's words to Grey Beaver.

　　White Fang slunk into camp one evening and dropped down with asigh of content. The dreaded white god was not there. For days hismanifestations of desire to lay hands on him had been growing moreinsistent, and during that time White Fang had been compelled to avoidthe camp. He did not know what evil was threatened by those insistenthands. He knew only that they did threaten evil of some sort, and that itwas best for him to keep out of their reach.

　　But scarcely had he lain down when Grey Beaver staggered over tohim and tied a leather thong around his neck. He sat down beside ............