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White Fang Part 4, Chapter 1: The Enemy of His Kind
There is no longer a chance White Fang will ever get along with the other dogs, for he is now made leader on the dog sled. The dogs hate him now, and chase him all day long on the sled. There is no way out for White Fang. If he turns to face the dogs, Mit-sah cracks his whip on White Fang. But he can't fight the dogs behind him with his tail.
"One cannot violate the promptings of one's nature without having that nature recoil upon itself....Every urge of his being impelled him to spring upon the pack that cried at his heels, but it was the will of the gods that this should not be; and behind the will, to enforce it, was the whip of cariboo-gut with its biting thirty-foot lash." Part 4, Chapter 1, pg. 112
Topic Tracking: Instinct 8
Topic Tracking: Environment 9
At the end of the day, Mit-sah cries the command to stop the sled, and White Fang stops. At first, the other dogs keep running and attack White Fang, but they soon learn that Mit-sah will punish them with the whip. In the camp, however, the dogs are always attacking him. "Much of the Wild had been lost, so that to them the Wild was the unknown, the terrible, the ever menacing and ever warring. But to him, in appearance and action and impulse, still clung the Wild." Part 4, Chapter 1, pg. 213
However, the dogs cannot kill White Fang; he is too quick and wise. There is no other dog nearly as ferocious as White Fang, and Gray Beaver finds this amazing. When White Fang is almost five, he and Gray Beaver go on another journey to the Yukon. In their travels, the dogs they meet are not prepared for White Fang. He is a fighting machine.
In the summer, White Fang and Gray Beaver arrive at Fort Yukon. There is the old Hudson's Bay Company fort, and Gray Beaver stops. He has heard rumors of gold, and he has come with furs and leather to trade. It is at Fort Yukon that White Fang sees his first white man, and sees that they are even more powerful than the Indians.
He also fights with their dogs, and finds that they are weak and clumsy. He often strikes them at the throat and allows the other Indian dogs to kill them, thereby avoiding the punishment that comes from killing a dog. The dogs also learn to wait for steamboats, bringing more white men. Their dogs come off the boats and can be easily attacked.
"And so, fresh from the soft southern world, these dogs, trotting down the gang-plank and out upon the Yukon shore, had but to see White Fang to experience the irresistible impulse to rush upon him and destroy him. They might be town-reared dogs, but the instinctive fear of the Wild was theirs just the same." Part 4, Chapter 1, pg. 119
