In the autumn, as the days shortened and the first sharp bite of frost chilled the air, White Fang saw his chance for liberty. For several days, the village had been in a state of chaos. The summer camp was being dismantled, and the tribe was preparing to move to the fall hunting grounds. White Fang watched with keen interest as the tepees were taken down and the canoes were loaded. When the first boats began to vanish down the river, he made a deliberate decision to stay behind.
He waited for the perfect moment to slink away into the forest. Finding a running stream, he walked through the icy water to hide his trail, then crawled into the heart of a dense thicket to wait. He slept intermittently for hours, only waking when he heard Grey Beaver’s voice calling his name. He heard the voices of Grey Beaver’s wife and son, Mit-sah, joining the search. White Fang trembled with fear, but he resisted the powerful impulse to come out. Eventually, the voices faded into the distance, and the forest returned to silence.
As darkness fell, White Fang crept out to enjoy his success. For a short time, he played among the trees, delighted by his newfound freedom. However, the joy was short-lived. Suddenly, he became aware of a profound loneliness. The absolute silence of the forest felt ominous, and he found himself suspicious of the towering trees and the dark shadows they cast.
Furthermore, it was freezing. There was no warm tepee to snuggle against, and the frost began to sting his paws. He sat down, lifting one foot after the other to keep them from freezing, and a series of memories flashed through his mind. He saw the camp, the blazing fires, and the familiar faces of the gods. He remembered the scraps of meat and fish he had been given. In the forest, there was no food—only a threatening, inedible silence.
His time in the camp had softened him. Having grown accustomed to the constant activity of human life, he had forgotten how to provide for himself. The vast night seemed to swallow him up. He jumped in terror when a formless shadow—merely a tree-shadow cast by the moon—rushed across his vision. A tree branch, contracting in the cold, made a loud snapping noise above him, causing him to yelp in fright.
A sudden panic seized him. Overwhelmed by a desperate need for protection, he ran madly back toward the village site. He could almost smell the camp-smoke and hear the familiar cries in his ears. But when he burst out of the forest into the moonlit clearing, no village greeted him. He had forgotten that the gods had moved on.
White Fang slunk forlornly through the deserted camp, sniffing the rubbish heaps the humans had left behind. He would have welcomed a shower of stones from an angry squaw or a blow from Grey Beaver’s hand; he even longed for the sight of the snarling, cowardly pack. He sat in the exact spot where Grey Beaver’s tepee had stood and pointed his nose at the moon. His throat tightened with spasms, and for the first time in his life, he let out a long, mournful wolf-howl, expressing all his loneliness, grief, and fear.
Daylight dispelled his terrors but intensified his isolation. He made up his mind quickly and plunged into the forest, following the riverbank downstream. He ran all day without resting, his iron-like body ignoring fatigue. When the river met steep cliffs, he climbed the mountains behind them. He swam across freezing streams and crossed thin ice, always searching for the "trail of the gods" where it might lead inland.
White Fang was exceptionally intelligent, yet he did not realize that the humans might have crossed to the other side of the Mackenzie River. He ran blindly, calculating only on his own side of the bank. By the middle of the second day, he had been running continuously for thirty hours. He was weak with hunger and his handsome coat was draggled from repeated drenchings in icy water. His paws were bruised and bleeding, and a raw, melting snow began to fall, making the ground slippery and difficult to navigate.
By a stroke of luck, Grey Beaver had decided to camp on the near bank that evening. A moose had come down to drink, and Grey Beaver had managed to kill it. Had that moose not appeared, or had the snow not altered their course, White Fang would have passed them in the night and likely perished or returned to the Wild forever.
As night fell, White Fang stumbled upon a fresh trail in the snow. Whining with eagerness, he followed it away from the river and into the trees. He heard the sounds of the camp and saw the brilliant glow of the fire. There was Grey Beaver, eating a piece of raw fat.
White Fang fully expected a brutal beating for his disappearance. He cringed and bristled at the thought, yet he went forward anyway. The comfort of the fire and the protection of the gods were worth any punishment. He came crawling and groveling into the firelight, moving with absolute submission. He lay at his master’s feet, voluntarily surrendering his soul. He waited, trembling, for the blow to fall.
When a hand moved above him, he flinched. But the blow never came. He looked up and saw that Grey Beaver was breaking his piece of tallow in half. The man offered him the food, and as White Fang ate, Grey Beaver guarded him from the other dogs. Grateful and content, White Fang lay at his master’s feet, gazing at the fire. He was no longer a wandering outcast; he was a dog of the man-animals, secure in the knowledge that he was no longer alone.