utlying
spurs of the Rockies. Then, after the break-up of the ice on the
Porcupine, he had built a canoe and paddled down that stream to where it
effected its junction with the Yukon just under the Artic circle. Here
stood the old Hudson's Bay Company fort; and here were many Indians, much
food, and unprecedented excitement. It was the summer of 1898, and
thousands of gold-hunters were going up the Yukon to Dawson and the
Klondike. Still hundreds of miles from their goal, nevertheless many of
them had been on the way for a year, and the least any of them had
travelled to get that far was five thousand miles, while some had come
from the other side of the world.

Here Grey Beaver stopped. A whisper of the gold-rush had reached his
ears, and he had come with several bales of furs, and another of gut-sewn
mittens and moccasins. He would not have ventured so long a trip had he
not expected generous profits. But what he had expected was nothing to
what he realised. His wildest dreams had not exceeded a hundred per
cent. profit; he made a thousand per cent. And like a true Indian, he
settled down to trade carefully and slowly, even if it took all summer
and the rest of the winter to dispose of his goods.

It was at Fort Yukon that White Fang saw his first white men. As
compared with the Indians he had known, they were to him another race of
beings, a race of superior gods. They impressed him as possessing
superior power, and it is on power that godhead rests. White Fang did
not reason it out, did not in his mind make the sharp generalisation that
the white gods were more powerful. It was a feeling, nothing more, and
yet none the less potent. As, in his puppyhood, the looming bulks of the
tepees, man-reared, had affected him as manifestations of power, so was
he affected now by the houses and the huge fort all of massive logs. Here
was power. Those white gods were strong. They possessed greater mastery
over matter than the gods he had known, most powerful among which was
Grey Beaver. And yet Grey Beaver was as a child-god among these white-
skinned ones.

To be sure, White Fang only felt these things. He was not conscious of
them. Yet it is upon feeling, more often than thinking, that animals
act; and every act White Fang now performed was based upon the feeling
that the white men were the superior gods. In the first place he was
very suspicious of them. There was no telling what unknown terrors were
t