It was the same with
his hair, sparse and irregular of growth, muddy-yellow and dirty-yellow,
rising on his head and sprouting out of his face in unexpected tufts and
bunches, in appearance like clumped and wind-blown grain.
In short, Beauty Smith was a monstrosity, and the blame of it lay
elsewhere. He was not responsible. The clay of him had been so moulded
in the making. He did the cooking for the other men in the fort, the
dish-washing and the drudgery. They did not despise him. Rather did
they tolerate him in a broad human way, as one tolerates any creature
evilly treated in the making. Also, they feared him. His cowardly rages
made them dread a shot in the back or poison in their coffee. But
somebody had to do the cooking, and whatever else his shortcomings,
Beauty Smith could cook.
This was the man that looked at White Fang, delighted in his ferocious
prowess, and desired to possess him. He made overtures to White Fang
from the first. White Fang began by ignoring him. Later on, when the
overtures became more insistent, White Fang bristled and bared his teeth
and backed away. He did not like the man. The feel of him was bad. He
sensed the evil in him, and feared the extended hand and the attempts at
soft-spoken speech. Because of all this, he hated the man.
With the simpler creatures, good and bad are things simply understood.
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