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White Fang Part 3, Chapter 6: The Famine
In April, the journey is finished, and White Fang returns to the home village. He has grown much, and it is clear that he is of a pure wolf strain. He looks slender and his coat is gray like a wolf's coat. He is the largest puppy in the village, except for Lip-lip.
One older dog, Baseek, who before the journey would have frightened him, has been growing weaker with age. At one point, White Fang is given a large amount of meat from a moose that has just been cut up. Eating it alone, Baseek catches him and tries to take his meat. Immediately, White Fang slashes him twice and springs away. Looking fierce, Baseek pulls himself up, and White Fang is frightened of him. However, the smell of meat is strong, and Baseek tries to start eating it in front of White Fang. This is too much, and White Fang strikes at Baseek's right ear, tearing it into shreds. Baseek is knocked over, and White Fang bites at his throat. Now the situation is reversed, and Baseek is forced to walk away.
The confrontation gives White Fang greater faith in himself, and greater pride. In midsummer, White Fang comes upon a new teepee, and finds Kiche there, remembering her vaguely. But when he approaches, she snarls at him. She does not remember him and tries to bite him.
"This was a female of his kind, and it was a law of his kind that the males must not fight the females. He did not know anything about this law, for it was no generalization of the mind, not a something acquired by experience in the world. He knew it as a secret prompting, as an urge of instinct - of the same instinct that made him howl at the moon and starts of nights and that made him fear death and the unknown." Part 3, Chapter 6, pg. 106
White Fang continues to grow as the months go by, becoming stronger and more compact. He also becomes more solitary and ferocious. He cannot stand being laughed at, and flies into a horrible rage. When he is being laughed at, he attacks all the dogs of the camp in anger.
When White Fang is three, a famine comes to the Mackenzie Indians. There is no food, and the dogs begin to eat one another. The old and weak of the Indians are dying. They begin to eat the leather of their shoes and mittens. White Fang goes to the woods, and hunts small animals. He hunts squirrels, and when they become scarce, looks for mice. He encounters a young wolf, and he is so hungry that he kills and eats it.
At one point, he even meets Lip-lip, also living in the Wild. He kills him quickly, despite the fear that always goes along with his most hated enemy. Soon after, he finds a village near a different part of the river. It is the old Indian camp, just in a new location. He marches down to Gray Beaver's teepee, and is greeted with fish from Kloo-kooch. He sits down and waits for Gray Beaver to come home.
