His iron-like body ignored fatigue.And even after fatigue came, his heritage of endurance braced him to endless endeavor and enabled him to drive his complaining body onward.
Where the river swung in against precipitous bluffs, he climbed the high mountains behind.Rivers and streams that entered the main river he forded or swam.Often he took to the rim-ice that was beginning to form, and more than once he crashed through and struggled for life in the icy current.Always he was on the lookout for the trail of the gods where it might leave the river and proceed inland.
White Fang was intelligent beyond the average of his kind; yet his mental vision was not wide enough to embrace the other bank of the Mackenzie.
What if the trail of the gods led out on that side? It never entered his head.Later on, when he had travelled more and grown older and wiser and come to know more of trails and rivers, it might be that he could grasp and apprehend such a possibility.But that mental power was yet in the future.Just now he ran blindly, his own bank of the Mackenzie alone entering into his calculations.
All night he ran, blundering in the darkness into mishaps and obstacles that delayed but did not daunt.By the middle of the second day he had been running continuously for thirty hours, and the iron of his flesh was giving out.It was the endurance of his mind that kept him going.He had not eaten in forty hours, and he was weak with hunger.The repeated drenchings in the icy water had likewise had their effect on him.His handsome coat was draggled.The broad pads of his feet were bruised and bleeding.He had begun to limp, and this limp increased with the hours.To make it worse, the light of the sky was obscured and snow began to fall -- a raw, moist, melting, clinging snow, slippery under foot, that hid from him the landscape he traversed, and that covered over the inequalities of the ground so that the way of his feet was more difficult and painful.
Gray Beaver had intended camping that night on the far bank of the Mackenzie, for it was in that direction that the hunting lay.But on the near bank, shortly before dark, a moose, coming down to drink, had been espied by Kloo-kooch, who was Gray Beaver's squaw.Now, had not the moose come down to drink, had not Mit-sah been steering out of the course because of the snow, had not Kloo-kooch sighted the moose, and had not Gray Beaver killed it with a lucky shot from his rifle, all subsequent things would have happened differently.Gray Beaver would not have camped on the near side of the Mackenzie, and White Fang would have passed by and gone on, either to die or to find his way to his wild brothers and become one of them, -- a wolf to the end of his days.
Night had fallen.The snow was flying more thickly, and White Fang, whimpering softly to himself as he stumbled and limped along, came upon a fresh trail in the snow.So fresh was it that he knew it immediately for what it was.Whining with eagerness, he followed back from the river bank and in among the trees.The camp-sounds came to his ears.He saw the blaze of the fire, Kloo-kooch cooking, and Gray Beaver squatting on his hams and mumbling a chunk of raw tallow.There was fresh meat in camp!
White Fang expected a beating.He crouched and bristled a little at the thought of it.Then he went forward again.He feared and disliked the beating he knew to be waiting for him.But he knew, further, that the comfort of the fire would be his, the protection of the gods, the companionship of the dogs -- the last, a companionship of enmity, but none the less a companionship and satisfying to his gregarious needs.
He came cringing and crawling into the firelight.Gray Beaver saw him, and stopped munching the tallow.White Fang crawled slowly, cringing and grovelling in the abjectness of his abasement and submission.He crawled straight toward Gray Beaver, every inch of his progress becoming slower and more painful.At last he lay at the master's feet, into whose possession he now surrendered himself, voluntarily, body and soul.Of his own choice, he came in to sit by man's fire and to be ruled by him.White Fang trembled, waiting for the punishment to fall upon him.There was a movement of the hand above him.He cringed involuntarily under the expected blow.It did not fall.He stole a glance upward.Gray Beaver was breaking the lump of tallow in half! Gray Beaver was offering him one piece of the tallow! Very gently and somewhat suspiciously, he first smelled the tallow and then proceeded to eat it.Gray Beaver ordered meat to be brought to him, and guarded him from the other dogs while he ate.After that, grateful and content, White Fang lay at Gray Beaver's feet, gazing at the fire that warmed him, blinking and dozing, secure in the knowledge that the morrow would find him, not wandering forlorn through bleak forest-stretches, but in the camp of the man-animals, with the gods to whom he had given himself and upon whom he was now dependent.
