not fast enough.

Successful as he was with squirrels, there was one difficulty that
prevented him from living and growing fat on them. There were not enough
squirrels. So he was driven to hunt still smaller things. So acute did
his hunger become at times that he was not above rooting out wood-mice
from their burrows in the ground. Nor did he scorn to do battle with a
weasel as hungry as himself and many times more ferocious.

In the worst pinches of the famine he stole back to the fires of the
gods. But he did not go into the fires. He lurked in the forest,
avoiding discovery and robbing the snares at the rare intervals when game
was caught. He even robbed Grey Beaver's snare of a rabbit at a time
when Grey Beaver staggered and tottered through the forest, sitting down
often to rest, what of weakness and of shortness of breath.

One day While Fang encountered a young wolf, gaunt and scrawny, loose-
jointed with famine. Had he not been hungry himself, White Fang might
have gone with him and eventually found his way into the pack amongst his
wild brethren. As it was, he ran the young wolf down and killed and ate
him.

Fortune seemed to favour him. Always, when hardest pressed for food, he
found something to kill. Again, when he was weak, it was his luck that
none of the larger preying animals chanced upon him. Thus, he was strong
from the two days' eating a lynx had afforded him when the hungry wolf-
pack ran full tilt upon him. It was a long, cruel chase, but he was
better nourished than they, and in the end outran them. And not only did
he outrun them, but, circling widely back on his track, he gathered in
one of his exhausted pursuers.

After that he left that part of the country and journeyed over to the
valley wherein he had been born. Here, in the old lair, he encountered
Kiche. Up to her old tricks, she, too, had fled the inhospitable fires
of the gods and gone back to her old refuge to give birth to her young.
Of this litter but one remained alive when White Fang came upon the
scene, and this one was not destined to live long. Young life had little
chance in such a famine.

Kiche's greeting of her grown son was anything but affectionate. But
White Fang did not mind. He had outgrown his mother. So he turned tail
philosophically and trotted on up the stream. At the forks he took the
turning to the left, where he found the lair of the lynx with whom his
mother and he had fought long before