In midsummer White Fang had an experience. Trotting along in his silent
way to investigate a new tepee which had been erected on the edge of the
village while he was away with the hunters after moose, he came full upon
Kiche. He paused and looked at her. He remembered her vaguely, but he
_remembered_ her, and that was more than could be said for her. She
lifted her lip at him in the old snarl of menace, and his memory became
clear. His forgotten cubhood, all that was associated with that familiar
snarl, rushed back to him. Before he had known the gods, she had been to
him the centre-pin of the universe. The old familiar feelings of that
time came back upon him, surged up within him. He bounded towards her
joyously, and she met him with shrewd fangs that laid his cheek open to
the bone. He did not understand. He backed away, bewildered and
puzzled.
But it was not Kiche's fault. A wolf-mother was not made to remember her
cubs of a year or so before. So she did not remember White Fang. He was
a strange animal, an intruder; and her present litter of puppies gave her
the right to resent such intrusion.
One of the puppies sprawled up to White Fang. They were half-brothers,
only they did not know it. White Fang sniffed the puppy curiously,
whereupon Kiche rushed upon him, gashing his face a second time.
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