In the fall of the year, when the days were shortening and the bite of the frost was coming into the air, White Fang got his chance for liberty.
For several days there had been a great hubbub in the village.The summer camp was being dismantled, and the tribe, bag and baggage, was preparing to go off to the fall hunting.White Fang watched it all with eager eyes, and when the tepees began to come down and the canoes were loading at the bank, he understood.Already the canoes were departing, and some had disappeared down the river.
Quite deliberately he determined to stay behind.He waited his opportunity to slink out of camp to the woods.Here, in the running stream where ice was beginning to form, he hid his trail.Then he crawled into the heart of a dense thicket and waited.The time passed by, and he slept intermittently for hours.Then he was aroused by Gray Beaver's voice calling him by name.
There were other voices.White Fang could hear Gray Beaver's squaw taking part in the search, and Mit-sah, who was Gray Beaver's son.
White Fang trembled with fear, and though the impulse came to crawl out of his hiding-place, he resisted it.After a time the voices died away, and some time after that he crept out to enjoy the success of his undertaking.
Darkness was coming on, and for a while he played about among the trees, pleasuring in his *******.Then, and quite suddenly, he became aware of loneliness.He sat down to consider, listening to the silence of the forest and perturbed by it.That nothing moved nor sounded, seemed ominous.He felt the lurking of danger, unseen and unguessed.He was suspicious of the looming bulks of the trees and of the dark shadows that might conceal all manner of perilous things.
Then it was cold.Here was no warm side of a tepee against which to snuggle.The frost was in his feet, and he kept lifting first one fore-foot and then the other.He curved his bushy tail around to cover them, and at the same time he saw a vision.There was nothing strange about it.Upon his inward sight was impressed a succession of memory-pictures.He saw the camp again, the tepees, and the blaze of the fires.He heard the shrill voices of the women, the gruff basses of the men, and the snarling of the dogs.He was hungry, and he remembered pieces of meat and fish that had been thrown him.Here was no meat, nothing but a threatening and inedible silence.
His bondage had softened him.Irresponsibility had weakened him.He had forgotten how to shift for himself.The night yawned about him.His senses, accustomed to the hum and bustle of the camp, used to the continuous impact of sights and sounds, were now left idle.There was nothing to do, nothing to see nor hear.They strained to catch some interruption of the silence and immobility of nature.They were appalled by inaction and by the feel of something terrible impending.
He gave a great start of fright.A colossal and formless something was rushing across the field of his vision.It was a tree-shadow flung by the moon, from whose face the clouds had been brushed away.Reassured, he whimpered softly; then he suppressed the whimper for fear that it might attract the attention of the lurking dangers.
A tree, contracting in the cool of the night, made a loud noise.It was directly above him.He yelped in his fright.A panic seized him, and he ran madly toward the village.He knew an overpowering desire for the protection and companionship of man.In his nostrils was the smell of the camp-smoke.In his ears the camp sounds and cries were ringing loud.He passed out of the forest and into the moonlit open where were no shadows nor darknesses.But no village greeted his eyes.He had forgotten.The village had gone away.
His wild flight ceased abruptly.There was no place to which to flee.
He slunk forlornly through the deserted camp, smelling the rubbish-heaps and the discarded rags and tags of the gods.He would have been glad for the rattle of stones about him, flung by an angry squaw, glad for the hand of Gray Beaver descending upon him in wrath; while he would have welcomed with delight Lip-lip and the whole snarling, cowardly pack.
He came to where Gray Beaver's tepee had stood.In the centre of the space it had occupied, he sat down.He pointed his nose at the moon.His throat was afflicted by rigid spasms, his mouth opened, and in a heart-broken cry bubbled up his loneliness and fear, his grief for Kiche, all his past sorrows and miseries as well as his apprehension of sufferings and dangers to come.It was the long wolf-howl, full-throated and mournful, the first howl he had ever uttered.
The coming of daylight dispelled his fears, but increased his loneliness.
The naked earth, which so shortly before had been so populous, thrust his loneliness more forcibly upon him.It did not take him long to make up his mind.He plunged into the forest and followed the river bank down the stream.All day he ran.He did not rest.He seemed made to run on forever.
