In consequence, the strange dogs he encountered had no chance against him.He eluded their fangs.He got them, or got away, himself untouched in either event.In the natural course of things there were exceptions to this.There were times when several dogs, pitching on to him, punished him before he could get away; and there were times when a single dog scored deeply on him.But these were accidents.In the main, so efficient a fighter had he become, he went his way unscathed.
Another advantage he possessed was that of correctly judging time and distance.Not that he did this consciously, however.He did not calculate such things.It was all automatic.His eyes saw correctly, and the nerves carried the vision correctly to his brain.The parts of him were better adjusted than those of the average dog.They worked together more smoothly and steadily.His was a better, far better, nervous, mental, and muscular co[[Yacute]]rdination.When his eyes conveyed to his brain the moving image of an action, his brain, without conscious effort, knew the space that limited that action and the time required for its completion.Thus, he could avoid the leap of another dog, or the drive of its fangs, and at the same moment could seize the infinitesimal fraction of time in which to deliver his own attack.Body and brain, his was a more perfected mechanism.
Not that he was to be praised for it.Nature had been more generous to him than to the average animal, that was all.
It was in the summer that White Fang arrived at Fort Yukon.Gray Beaver had crossed the great water-shed between the Mackenzie and the Yukon in the late winter, and spent the spring in hunting among the western outlying 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 Arctic 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.