White Fang

White Fang is a grey cub in a hidden den, the only cub of his litter who takes after his grey father. He is curious and stubborn, drawn toward the bright wall of light at the mouth of the cave. The wild is the only world he knows yet, and it teaches its lessons with teeth.

Kiche is a lean she-wolf with a strange reddish coat who runs at the head of a wolf pack through a starving Yukon winter. She is patient, clever, and fiercely protective of whatever she claims as hers. The pack follows her lead more often than it follows any of the males.

One Eye is a battle-worn old wolf who has outlived more hungry winters than anyone else in his pack. He is wary, unhurried, and enormously experienced, hunting by cunning rather than by speed. He is neither the biggest wolf on the trail nor the fastest, but he may well be the smartest.

Bill is a trail-hand on a long winter haul toward Fort McGurry, walking behind the sled while his partner breaks trail. He talks more than he has to, notices small wrong numbers, and does not like leaving a question unanswered. Under the frost on his face he is a man who would rather name a danger than joke it away.

Henry is Bill's partner on the same frozen haul, the one who breaks trail on snowshoes and tends the fire and the coffee-pot. He is slower to admit that something is wrong, and quicker to make a dry joke when the silence gets heavy. He does the practical work of camp as if naming a fear might make it real.

Grey Beaver is a respected hunter and trader who leads his people's camp along the Mackenzie River. He is stern, quiet, and thoroughly practical, expecting steady obedience from everyone and everything in his household. To him an animal is property — useful, valuable, and never a friend.

Mit-sah is Grey Beaver's son, still young enough to be learning a man's work and already serious about it. He resembles his father in the way he watches and waits before he speaks. In camp he is a boy among dogs and sleds, not yet the head of a household.

Lip-lip is a camp puppy, bigger and older than the grey cub who arrives beside Kiche. He already knows the other young dogs of the village, and he treats a newcomer as something to be driven off. He is bold when no grown person is watching, and careful when one is.

Beauty Smith is a camp cook and odd-job man who drifts from settlement to settlement around the goldrush town of Dawson, taking whatever work he can get. He is nervous and flattering around men stronger than himself, and a great deal braver around anything smaller. Watch how differently he behaves when no one important is looking.

Weedon Scott is a mining engineer from California, working a claim in the Klondike a long way from the comfortable life he grew up in. He is even-tempered, observant, and unusually patient, with firm opinions about how animals ought to be handled. Among the rough crowd of the goldfields, he stands out for refusing to settle anything with a club.

Matt is a working dog-musher who knows sled-dogs the way a carpenter knows wood. He talks in a dry Northern drawl, shrugs more than he lectures, and trusts what a dog's body tells him over what a theory says. He is practical, stubborn once he has made up his mind, and not easily frightened by a snarl.

Collie is the ranch sheep-dog of a family place in the Santa Clara Valley, bright-eyed and sure of her job. She is quick, sharp-muzzled, and not in the habit of sharing a gate with a stranger. To her a wolf-looking animal is something to be kept off the lawn.

Judge Scott is an older gentleman of the Santa Clara Valley, the head of a large, comfortable household called Sierra Vista. He reads the newspaper on a wide porch and speaks in the measured way of a man used to giving verdicts. He is undemonstrative, sure of his opinions, and not easily talked out of them.