Chapter 3 — PART II

Chapter 1

It was the she-wolf who had first caught the sound of men’s voices and
the whining of the sled-dogs; and it was the she-wolf who was first to spring
away from the cornered man in his circle of dying flame. The pack had been
loath to forego the kill it had hunted down, and it lingered for several
minutes, making sure of the sounds, and then it, too, sprang away on the trail
made by the she-wolf.

Running at the forefront of the pack was a large grey wolf—one of its
several leaders. It was he who directed the pack’s course on the heels of
the she-wolf. It was he who snarled warningly at the younger members of the
pack or slashed at them with his fangs when they ambitiously tried to pass him.
And it was he who increased the pace when he sighted the she-wolf, now trotting
slowly across the snow.

She dropped in alongside by him, as though it were her appointed position, and
took the pace of the pack. He did not snarl at her, nor show his teeth, when
any leap of hers chanced to put her in advance of him. On the contrary, he
seemed kindly disposed toward her—too kindly to suit her, for he was
prone to run near to her, and when he ran too near it was she who snarled and
showed her teeth. Nor was she above slashing his shoulder sharply on occasion.
At such times he betrayed no anger. He merely sprang to the side and ran
stiffly ahead for several awkward leaps, in carriage and conduct resembling an
abashed country swain.

This was his one trouble in the running of the pack; but she had other
troubles. On her other side ran a gaunt old wolf, grizzled and marked with the
scars of many battles. He ran always on her right side. The fact that he had
but one eye, and that the left eye, might account for this. He, also, was
addicted to crowding her, to veering toward her till his scarred muzzle touched
her body, or shoulder, or neck. As with the running mate on the left, she
repelled these attentions with her teeth; but when both bestowed their
attentions at the same time she was roughly jostled, being compelled, with
quick snaps to either side, to drive both lovers away and at the same time to
maintain her forward leap with the pack and see the way of her feet before her.
At such times her running mates flashed their teeth and growled threateningly
across at each other. They might have fought, but even wooing and its rivalry
waited upon the more pressing hunger-need of the pack.

After each repulse, when the old wolf sheered abruptly away from the
sharp-toothed object of his desire, he shouldered against a young
three-year-old that ran on his blind right side. This young wolf had attained
his full size; and, considering the weak and famished condition of the pack, he
possessed more than the average vigour and spirit. Nevertheless, he ran with
his head even with the shoulder of his one-eyed elder. When he ventured to run
abreast of the older wolf (which was seldom), a snarl and a snap sent him back
even with the shoulder again. Sometimes, however, he dropped cautiously and
slowly behind and edged in between the old leader and the she-wolf. This was
doubly resented, even triply resented. When she snarled her displeasure, the
old leader would whirl on the three-year-old. Sometimes she whirled with him.
And sometimes the young leader on the left whirled, too.

At such times, confronted by three sets of savage teeth, the young wolf stopped
precipitately, throwing himself back on his haunches, with fore-legs stiff,
mouth menacing, and mane bristling. This confusion in the front of the moving
pack always caused confusion in the rear. The wolves behind collided with the
young wolf and expressed their displeasure by administering sharp nips on his
hind-legs and flanks. He was laying up trouble for himself, for lack of food
and short tempers went together; but with the boundless faith of youth he
persisted in repeating the manoeuvre every little while, though it never
succeeded in gaining anything for him but discomfiture.

Had there been food, love-making and fighting would have gone on apace, and the
pack-formation would have been broken up. But the situation of the pack was
desperate. It was lean with long-standing hunger. It ran below its ordinary
speed. At the rear limped the weak members, the very young and the very old. At
the front were the strongest. Yet all were more like skeletons than full-bodied
wolves. Nevertheless, with the exception of the ones that limped, the movements
of the animals were effortless and tireless. Their stringy muscles seemed
founts of inexhaustible energy. Behind every steel-like contraction of a
muscle, lay another steel-like contraction, and another, and another,
apparently without end.

They ran many miles that day. They ran through the night. And the next day
found them still running. They were running over the surface of a world frozen
and dead. No life stirred. They alone moved through the vast inertness. They
alone were alive, and they sought for other things that were alive in order
that they might devour them and continue to live.

They crossed low divides and ranged a dozen small streams in a lower-lying
country before their quest was rewarded. Then they came upon moose. It was a
big bull they first found. Here was meat and life, and it was guarded by no
mysterious fires nor flying missiles of flame. Splay hoofs and palmated antlers
they knew, and they flung their customary patience and caution to the wind. It
was a brief fight and fierce. The big bull was beset on every side. He ripped
them open or split their skulls with shrewdly driven blows of his great hoofs.
He crushed them and broke them on his large horns. He stamped them into the
snow under him in the wallowing struggle. But he was foredoomed, and he went
down with the she-wolf tearing savagely at his throat, and with other teeth
fixed everywhere upon him, devouring him alive, before ever his last struggles
ceased or his last damage had been wrought.

There was food in plenty. The bull weighed over eight hundred
pounds—fully twenty pounds of meat per mouth for the forty-odd wolves of
the pack. But if they could fast prodigiously, they could feed prodigiously,
and soon a few scattered bones were all that remained of the splendid live
brute that had faced the pack a few hours before.

There was now much resting and sleeping. With full stomachs, bickering and
quarrelling began among the younger males, and this continued through the few
days that followed before the breaking-up of the pack. The famine was over. The
wolves were now in the country of game, and though they still hunted in pack,
they hunted more cautiously, cutting out heavy cows or crippled old bulls from
the small moose-herds they ran across.

There came a day, in this land of plenty, when the wolf-pack split in half and
went in different directions. The she-wolf, the young leader on her left, and
the one-eyed elder on her right, led their half of the pack down to the
Mackenzie River and across into the lake country to the east. Each day this
remnant of the pack dwindled. Two by two, male and female, the wolves were
deserting. Occasionally a solitary male was driven out by the sharp teeth of
his rivals. In the end there remained only four: the she-wolf, the young
leader, the one-eyed one, and the ambitious three-year-old.

The she-wolf had by now developed a ferocious temper. Her three suitors all
bore the marks of her teeth. Yet they never replied in kind, never defended
themselves against her. They turned their shoulders to her most savage slashes,
and with wagging tails and mincing steps strove to placate her wrath. But if
they were all mildness toward her, they were all fierceness toward one another.
The three-year-old grew too ambitious in his fierceness. He caught the one-eyed
elder on his blind side and ripped his ear into ribbons. Though the grizzled
old fellow could see only on one side, against the youth and vigour of the
other he brought into play the wisdom of long years of experience. His lost eye
and his scarred muzzle bore evidence to the nature of his experience. He had
survived too many battles to be in doubt for a moment about what to do.

The battle began fairly, but it did not end fairly. There was no telling what
the outcome would have been, for the third wolf joined the elder, and together,
old leader and young leader, they attacked the ambitious three-year-old and
proceeded to destroy him. He was beset on either side by the merciless fangs of
his erstwhile comrades. Forgotten were the days they had hunted together, the
game they had pulled down, the famine they had suffered. That business was a
thing of the past. The business of love was at hand—ever a sterner and
crueller business than that of food-getting.

And in the meanwhile, the she-wolf, the cause of it all, sat down contentedly
on her haunches and watched. She was even pleased. This was her day—and
it came not often—when manes bristled, and fang smote fang or ripped and
tore the yielding flesh, all for the possession of her.

And in the business of love the three-year-old, who had made this his first
adventure upon it, yielded up his life. On either side of his body stood his
two rivals. They were gazing at the she-wolf, who sat smiling in the snow. But
the elder leader was wise, very wise, in love even as in battle. The younger
leader turned his head to lick a wound on his shoulder. The curve of his neck
was turned toward his rival. With his one eye the elder saw the opportunity. He
darted in low and closed with his fangs. It was a long, ripping slash, and deep
as well. His teeth, in passing, burst the wall of the great vein of the throat.
Then he leaped clear.

The young leader snarled terribly, but his snarl broke midmost into a tickling
cough. Bleeding and coughing, already stricken, he sprang at the elder and
fought while life faded from him, his legs going weak beneath him, the light of
day dulling on his eyes, his blows and springs falling shorter and shorter.

And all the while the she-wolf sat on her haunches and smiled. She was made
glad in vague ways by the battle, for this was the love-making of the Wild, the
sex-tragedy of the natural world that was tragedy only to those that died. To
those that survived it was not tragedy, but realisation and achievement.

When the young leader lay in the snow and moved no more, One Eye stalked over
to the she-wolf. His carriage was one of mingled triumph and caution. He was
plainly expectant of a rebuff, and he was just as plainly surprised when her
teeth did not flash out at him in anger. For the first time she met him with a
kindly manner. She sniffed noses with him, and even condescended to leap about
and frisk and play with him in quite puppyish fashion. And he, for all his grey
years and sage experience, behaved quite as puppyishly and even a little more
foolishly.

Forgotten already were the vanquished rivals and the love-tale red-written on
the snow. Forgotten, save once, when old One Eye stopped for a moment to lick
his stiffening wounds. Then it was that his lips half writhed into a snarl, and
the hair of his neck and shoulders involuntarily bristled, while he half
crouched for a spring, his claws spasmodically clutching into the snow-surface
for firmer footing. But it was all forgotten the next moment, as he sprang
after the she-wolf, who was coyly leading him a chase through the woods.

After that they ran side by side, like good friends who have come to an
understanding. The days passed by, and they kept together, hunting their meat
and killing and eating it in common. After a time the she-wolf began to grow
restless. She seemed to be searching for something that she could not find. The
hollows under fallen trees seemed to attract her, and she spent much time
nosing about among the larger snow-piled crevices in the rocks and in the caves
of overhanging banks. Old One Eye was not interested at all, but he followed
her good-naturedly in her quest, and when her investigations in particular
places were unusually protracted, he would lie down and wait until she was
ready to go on.

They did not remain in one place, but travelled across country until they
regained the Mackenzie River, down which they slowly went, leaving it often to
hunt game along the small streams that entered it, but always returning to it
again. Sometimes they chanced upon other wolves, usually in pairs; but there
was no friendliness of intercourse displayed on either side, no gladness at
meeting, no desire to return to the pack-formation. Several times they
encountered solitary wolves. These were always males, and they were pressingly
insistent on joining with One Eye and his mate. This he resented, and when she
stood shoulder to shoulder with him, bristling and showing her teeth, the
aspiring solitary ones would back off, turn-tail, and continue on their lonely
way.

One moonlight night, running through the quiet forest, One Eye suddenly halted.
His muzzle went up, his tail stiffened, and his nostrils dilated as he scented
the air. One foot also he held up, after the manner of a dog. He was not
satisfied, and he continued to smell the air, striving to understand the
message borne upon it to him. One careless sniff had satisfied his mate, and
she trotted on to reassure him. Though he followed her, he was still dubious,
and he could not forbear an occasional halt in order more carefully to study
the warning.

She crept out cautiously on the edge of a large open space in the midst of the
trees. For some time she stood alone. Then One Eye, creeping and crawling,
every sense on the alert, every hair radiating infinite suspicion, joined her.
They stood side by side, watching and listening and smelling.

To their ears came the sounds of dogs wrangling and scuffling, the guttural
cries of men, the sharper voices of scolding women, and once the shrill and
plaintive cry of a child. With the exception of the huge bulks of the
skin-lodges, little could be seen save the flames of the fire, broken by the
movements of intervening bodies, and the smoke rising slowly on the quiet air.
But to their nostrils came the myriad smells of an Indian camp, carrying a
story that was largely incomprehensible to One Eye, but every detail of which
the she-wolf knew.

She was strangely stirred, and sniffed and sniffed with an increasing delight.
But old One Eye was doubtful. He betrayed his apprehension, and started
tentatively to go. She turned and touched his neck with her muzzle in a
reassuring way, then regarded the camp again. A new wistfulness was in her
face, but it was not the wistfulness of hunger. She was thrilling to a desire
that urged her to go forward, to be in closer to that fire, to be squabbling
with the dogs, and to be avoiding and dodging the stumbling feet of men.

One Eye moved impatiently beside her; her unrest came back upon her, and she
knew again her pressing need to find the thing for which she searched. She
turned and trotted back into the forest, to the great relief of One Eye, who
trotted a little to the fore until they were well within the shelter of the
trees.

As they slid along, noiseless as shadows, in the moonlight, they came upon a
run-way. Both noses went down to the footprints in the snow. These footprints
were very fresh. One Eye ran ahead cautiously, his mate at his heels. The broad
pads of their feet were spread wide and in contact with the snow were like
velvet. One Eye caught sight of a dim movement of white in the midst of the
white. His sliding gait had been deceptively swift, but it was as nothing to
the speed at which he now ran. Before him was bounding the faint patch of white
he had discovered.

They were running along a narrow alley flanked on either side by a growth of
young spruce. Through the trees the mouth of the alley could be seen, opening
out on a moonlit glade. Old One Eye was rapidly overhauling the fleeing shape
of white. Bound by bound he gained. Now he was upon it. One leap more and his
teeth would be sinking into it. But that leap was never made. High in the air,
and straight up, soared the shape of white, now a struggling snowshoe rabbit
that leaped and bounded, executing a fantastic dance there above him in the air
and never once returning to earth.

One Eye sprang back with a snort of sudden fright, then shrank down to the snow
and crouched, snarling threats at this thing of fear he did not understand. But
the she-wolf coolly thrust past him. She poised for a moment, then sprang for
the dancing rabbit. She, too, soared high, but not so high as the quarry, and
her teeth clipped emptily together with a metallic snap. She made another leap,
and another.

Her mate had slowly relaxed from his crouch and was watching her. He now
evinced displeasure at her repeated failures, and himself made a mighty spring
upward. His teeth closed upon the rabbit, and he bore it back to earth with
him. But at the same time there was a suspicious crackling movement beside him,
and his astonished eye saw a young spruce sapling bending down above him to
strike him. His jaws let go their grip, and he leaped backward to escape this
strange danger, his lips drawn back from his fangs, his throat snarling, every
hair bristling with rage and fright. And in that moment the sapling reared its
slender length upright and the rabbit soared dancing in the air again.

The she-wolf was angry. She sank her fangs into her mate’s shoulder in
reproof; and he, frightened, unaware of what constituted this new onslaught,
struck back ferociously and in still greater fright, ripping down the side of
the she-wolf’s muzzle. For him to resent such reproof was equally
unexpected to her, and she sprang upon him in snarling indignation. Then he
discovered his mistake and tried to placate her. But she proceeded to punish
him roundly, until he gave over all attempts at placation, and whirled in a
circle, his head away from her, his shoulders receiving the punishment of her
teeth.

In the meantime the rabbit danced above them in the air. The she-wolf sat down
in the snow, and old One Eye, now more in fear of his mate than of the
mysterious sapling, again sprang for the rabbit. As he sank back with it
between his teeth, he kept his eye on the sapling. As before, it followed him
back to earth. He crouched down under the impending blow, his hair bristling,
but his teeth still keeping tight hold of the rabbit. But the blow did not
fall. The sapling remained bent above him. When he moved it moved, and he
growled at it through his clenched jaws; when he remained still, it remained
still, and he concluded it was safer to continue remaining still. Yet the warm
blood of the rabbit tasted good in his mouth.

It was his mate who relieved him from the quandary in which he found himself.
She took the rabbit from him, and while the sapling swayed and teetered
threateningly above her she calmly gnawed off the rabbit’s head. At once
the sapling shot up, and after that gave no more trouble, remaining in the
decorous and perpendicular position in which nature had intended it to grow.
Then, between them, the she-wolf and One Eye devoured the game which the
mysterious sapling had caught for them.

There were other run-ways and alleys where rabbits were hanging in the air, and
the wolf-pair prospected them all, the she-wolf leading the way, old One Eye
following and observant, learning the method of robbing snares—a
knowledge destined to stand him in good stead in the days to come.

For two days the she-wolf and One Eye hung about the Indian camp. He was
worried and apprehensive, yet the camp lured his mate and she was loath to
depart. But when, one morning, the air was rent with the report of a rifle
close at hand, and a bullet smashed against a tree trunk several inches from
One Eye’s head, they hesitated no more, but went off on a long, swinging
lope that put quick miles between them and the danger.

They did not go far—a couple of days’ journey. The she-wolf’s
need to find the thing for which she searched had now become imperative. She
was getting very heavy, and could run but slowly. Once, in the pursuit of a
rabbit, which she ordinarily would have caught with ease, she gave over and lay
down and rested. One Eye came to her; but when he touched her neck gently with
his muzzle she snapped at him with such quick fierceness that he tumbled over
backward and cut a ridiculous figure in his effort to escape her teeth. Her
temper was now shorter than ever; but he had become more patient than ever and
more solicitous.

And then she found the thing for which she sought. It was a few miles up a
small stream that in the summer time flowed into the Mackenzie, but that then
was frozen over and frozen down to its rocky bottom—a dead stream of
solid white from source to mouth. The she-wolf was trotting wearily along, her
mate well in advance, when she came upon the overhanging, high clay-bank. She
turned aside and trotted over to it. The wear and tear of spring storms and
melting snows had underwashed the bank and in one place had made a small cave
out of a narrow fissure.

She paused at the mouth of the cave and looked the wall over carefully. Then,
on one side and the other, she ran along the base of the wall to where its
abrupt bulk merged from the softer-lined landscape. Returning to the cave, she
entered its narrow mouth. For a short three feet she was compelled to crouch,
then the walls widened and rose higher in a little round chamber nearly six
feet in diameter. The roof barely cleared her head. It was dry and cosey. She
inspected it with painstaking care, while One Eye, who had returned, stood in
the entrance and patiently watched her. She dropped her head, with her nose to
the ground and directed toward a point near to her closely bunched feet, and
around this point she circled several times; then, with a tired sigh that was
almost a grunt, she curled her body in, relaxed her legs, and dropped down, her
head toward the entrance. One Eye, with pointed, interested ears, laughed at
her, and beyond, outlined against the white light, she could see the brush of
his tail waving good-naturedly. Her own ears, with a snuggling movement, laid
their sharp points backward and down against the head for a moment, while her
mouth opened and her tongue lolled peaceably out, and in this way she expressed
that she was pleased and satisfied.

One Eye was hungry. Though he lay down in the entrance and slept, his sleep was
fitful. He kept awaking and cocking his ears at the bright world without, where
the April sun was blazing across the snow. When he dozed, upon his ears would
steal the faint whispers of hidden trickles of running water, and he would
rouse and listen intently. The sun had come back, and all the awakening
Northland world was calling to him. Life was stirring. The feel of spring was
in the air, the feel of growing life under the snow, of sap ascending in the
trees, of buds bursting the shackles of the frost.

He cast anxious glances at his mate, but she showed no desire to get up. He
looked outside, and half a dozen snow-birds fluttered across his field of
vision. He started to get up, then looked back to his mate again, and settled
down and dozed. A shrill and minute singing stole upon his hearing. Once, and
twice, he sleepily brushed his nose with his paw. Then he woke up. There,
buzzing in the air at the tip of his nose, was a lone mosquito. It was a
full-grown mosquito, one that had lain frozen in a dry log all winter and that
had now been thawed out by the sun. He could resist the call of the world no
longer. Besides, he was hungry.

He crawled over to his mate and tried to persuade her to get up. But she only
snarled at him, and he walked out alone into the bright sunshine to find the
snow-surface soft under foot and the travelling difficult. He went up the
frozen bed of the stream, where the snow, shaded by the trees, was yet hard and
crystalline. He was gone eight hours, and he came back through the darkness
hungrier than when he had started. He had found game, but he had not caught it.
He had broken through the melting snow crust, and wallowed, while the snowshoe
rabbits had skimmed along on top lightly as ever.

He paused at the mouth of the cave with a sudden shock of suspicion. Faint,
strange sounds came from within. They were sounds not made by his mate, and yet
they were remotely familiar. He bellied cautiously inside and was met by a
warning snarl from the she-wolf. This he received without perturbation, though
he obeyed it by keeping his distance; but he remained interested in the other
sounds—faint, muffled sobbings and slubberings.

His mate warned him irritably away, and he curled up and slept in the entrance.
When morning came and a dim light pervaded the lair, he again sought after the
source of the remotely familiar sounds. There was a new note in his
mate’s warning snarl. It was a jealous note, and he was very careful in
keeping a respectful distance. Nevertheless, he made out, sheltering between
her legs against the length of her body, five strange little bundles of life,
very feeble, very helpless, making tiny whimpering noises, with eyes that did
not open to the light. He was surprised. It was not the first time in his long
and successful life that this thing had happened. It had happened many times,
yet each time it was as fresh a surprise as ever to him.

His mate looked at him anxiously. Every little while she emitted a low growl,
and at times, when it seemed to her he approached too near, the growl shot up
in her throat to a sharp snarl. Of her own experience she had no memory of the
thing happening; but in her instinct, which was the experience of all the
mothers of wolves, there lurked a memory of fathers that had eaten their
new-born and helpless progeny. It manifested itself as a fear strong within
her, that made her prevent One Eye from more closely inspecting the cubs he had
fathered.

But there was no danger. Old One Eye was feeling the urge of an impulse, that
was, in turn, an instinct that had come down to him from all the fathers of
wolves. He did not question it, nor puzzle over it. It was there, in the fibre
of his being; and it was the most natural thing in the world that he should
obey it by turning his back on his new-born family and by trotting out and away
on the meat-trail whereby he lived.

Five or six miles from the lair, the stream divided, its forks going off among
the mountains at a right angle. Here, leading up the left fork, he came upon a
fresh track. He smelled it and found it so recent that he crouched swiftly, and
looked in the direction in which it disappeared. Then he turned deliberately
and took the right fork. The footprint was much larger than the one his own
feet made, and he knew that in the wake of such a trail there was little meat
for him.

Half a mile up the right fork, his quick ears caught the sound of gnawing
teeth. He stalked the quarry and found it to be a porcupine, standing upright
against a tree and trying his teeth on the bark. One Eye approached carefully
but hopelessly. He knew the breed, though he had never met it so far north
before; and never in his long life had porcupine served him for a meal. But he
had long since learned that there was such a thing as Chance, or Opportunity,
and he continued to draw near. There was never any telling what might happen,
for with live things events were somehow always happening differently.

The porcupine rolled itself into a ball, radiating long, sharp needles in all
directions that defied attack. In his youth One Eye had once sniffed too near a
similar, apparently inert ball of quills, and had the tail flick out suddenly
in his face. One quill he had carried away in his muzzle, where it had remained
for weeks, a rankling flame, until it finally worked out. So he lay down, in a
comfortable crouching position, his nose fully a foot away, and out of the line
of the tail. Thus he waited, keeping perfectly quiet. There was no telling.
Something might happen. The porcupine might unroll. There might be opportunity
for a deft and ripping thrust of paw into the tender, unguarded belly.

But at the end of half an hour he arose, growled wrathfully at the motionless
ball, and trotted on. He had waited too often and futilely in the past for
porcupines to unroll, to waste any more time. He continued up the right fork.
The day wore along, and nothing rewarded his hunt.

The urge of his awakened instinct of fatherhood was strong upon him. He must
find meat. In the afternoon he blundered upon a ptarmigan. He came out of a
thicket and found himself face to face with the slow-witted bird. It was
sitting on a log, not a foot beyond the end of his nose. Each saw the other.
The bird made a startled rise, but he struck it with his paw, and smashed it
down to earth, then pounced upon it, and caught it in his teeth as it scuttled
across the snow trying to rise in the air again. As his teeth crunched through
the tender flesh and fragile bones, he began naturally to eat. Then he
remembered, and, turning on the back-track, started for home, carrying the
ptarmigan in his mouth.

A mile above the forks, running velvet-footed as was his custom, a gliding
shadow that cautiously prospected each new vista of the trail, he came upon
later imprints of the large tracks he had discovered in the early morning. As
the track led his way, he followed, prepared to meet the maker of it at every
turn of the stream.

He slid his head around a corner of rock, where began an unusually large bend
in the stream, and his quick eyes made out something that sent him crouching
swiftly down. It was the maker of the track, a large female lynx. She was
crouching as he had crouched once that day, in front of her the tight-rolled
ball of quills. If he had been a gliding shadow before, he now became the ghost
of such a shadow, as he crept and circled around, and came up well to leeward
of the silent, motionless pair.

He lay down in the snow, depositing the ptarmigan beside him, and with eyes
peering through the needles of a low-growing spruce he watched the play of life
before him—the waiting lynx and the waiting porcupine, each intent on
life; and, such was the curiousness of the game, the way of life for one lay in
the eating of the other, and the way of life for the other lay in being not
eaten. While old One Eye, the wolf crouching in the covert, played his part,
too, in the game, waiting for some strange freak of Chance, that might help him
on the meat-trail which was his way of life.

Half an hour passed, an hour; and nothing happened. The ball of quills might
have been a stone for all it moved; the lynx might have been frozen to marble;
and old One Eye might have been dead. Yet all three animals were keyed to a
tenseness of living that was almost painful, and scarcely ever would it come to
them to be more alive than they were then in their seeming petrifaction.

One Eye moved slightly and peered forth with increased eagerness. Something was
happening. The porcupine had at last decided that its enemy had gone away.
Slowly, cautiously, it was unrolling its ball of impregnable armour. It was
agitated by no tremor of anticipation. Slowly, slowly, the bristling ball
straightened out and lengthened. One Eye watching, felt a sudden moistness in
his mouth and a drooling of saliva, involuntary, excited by the living meat
that was spreading itself like a repast before him.

Not quite entirely had the porcupine unrolled when it discovered its enemy. In
that instant the lynx struck. The blow was like a flash of light. The paw, with
rigid claws curving like talons, shot under the tender belly and came back with
a swift ripping movement. Had the porcupine been entirely unrolled, or had it
not discovered its enemy a fraction of a second before the blow was struck, the
paw would have escaped unscathed; but a side-flick of the tail sank sharp
quills into it as it was withdrawn.

Everything had happened at once—the blow, the counter-blow, the squeal of
agony from the porcupine, the big cat’s squall of sudden hurt and
astonishment. One Eye half arose in his excitement, his ears up, his tail
straight out and quivering behind him. The lynx’s bad temper got the best
of her. She sprang savagely at the thing that had hurt her. But the porcupine,
squealing and grunting, with disrupted anatomy trying feebly to roll up into
its ball-protection, flicked out its tail again, and again the big cat squalled
with hurt and astonishment. Then she fell to backing away and sneezing, her
nose bristling with quills like a monstrous pin-cushion. She brushed her nose
with her paws, trying to dislodge the fiery darts, thrust it into the snow, and
rubbed it against twigs and branches, and all the time leaping about, ahead,
sidewise, up and down, in a frenzy of pain and fright.

She sneezed continually, and her stub of a tail was doing its best toward
lashing about by giving quick, violent jerks. She quit her antics, and quieted
down for a long minute. One Eye watched. And even he could not repress a start
and an involuntary bristling of hair along his back when she suddenly leaped,
without warning, straight up in the air, at the same time emitting a long and
most terrible squall. Then she sprang away, up the trail, squalling with every
leap she made.

It was not until her racket had faded away in the distance and died out that
One Eye ventured forth. He walked as delicately as though all the snow were
carpeted with porcupine quills, erect and ready to pierce the soft pads of his
feet. The porcupine met his approach with a furious squealing and a clashing of
its long teeth. It had managed to roll up in a ball again, but it was not quite
the old compact ball; its muscles were too much torn for that. It had been
ripped almost in half, and was still bleeding profusely.

One Eye scooped out mouthfuls of the blood-soaked snow, and chewed and tasted
and swallowed. This served as a relish, and his hunger increased mightily; but
he was too old in the world to forget his caution. He waited. He lay down and
waited, while the porcupine grated its teeth and uttered grunts and sobs and
occasional sharp little squeals. In a little while, One Eye noticed that the
quills were drooping and that a great quivering had set up. The quivering came
to an end suddenly. There was a final defiant clash of the long teeth. Then all
the quills drooped quite down, and the body relaxed and moved no more.

With a nervous, shrinking paw, One Eye stretched out the porcupine to its full
length and turned it over on its back. Nothing had happened. It was surely
dead. He studied it intently for a moment, then took a careful grip with his
teeth and started off down the stream, partly carrying, partly dragging the
porcupine, with head turned to the side so as to avoid stepping on the prickly
mass. He recollected something, dropped the burden, and trotted back to where
he had left the ptarmigan. He did not hesitate a moment. He knew clearly what
was to be done, and this he did by promptly eating the ptarmigan. Then he
returned and took up his burden.

When he dragged the result of his day’s hunt into the cave, the she-wolf
inspected it, turned her muzzle to him, and lightly licked him on the neck. But
the next instant she was warning him away from the cubs with a snarl that was
less harsh than usual and that was more apologetic than menacing. Her
instinctive fear of the father of her progeny was toning down. He was behaving
as a wolf-father should, and manifesting no unholy desire to devour the young
lives she had brought into the world.

He was different from his brothers and sisters. Their hair already betrayed the
reddish hue inherited from their mother, the she-wolf; while he alone, in this
particular, took after his father. He was the one little grey cub of the
litter. He had bred true to the straight wolf-stock—in fact, he had bred
true to old One Eye himself, physically, with but a single exception, and that
was he had two eyes to his father’s one.

The grey cub’s eyes had not been open long, yet already he could see with
steady clearness. And while his eyes were still closed, he had felt, tasted,
and smelled. He knew his two brothers and his two sisters very well. He had
begun to romp with them in a feeble, awkward way, and even to squabble, his
little throat vibrating with a queer rasping noise (the forerunner of the
growl), as he worked himself into a passion. And long before his eyes had
opened he had learned by touch, taste, and smell to know his mother—a
fount of warmth and liquid food and tenderness. She possessed a gentle,
caressing tongue that soothed him when it passed over his soft little body, and
that impelled him to snuggle close against her and to doze off to sleep.

Most of the first month of his life had been passed thus in sleeping; but now
he could see quite well, and he stayed awake for longer periods of time, and he
was coming to learn his world quite well. His world was gloomy; but he did not
know that, for he knew no other world. It was dim-lighted; but his eyes had
never had to adjust themselves to any other light. His world was very small.
Its limits were the walls of the lair; but as he had no knowledge of the wide
world outside, he was never oppressed by the narrow confines of his existence.

But he had early discovered that one wall of his world was different from the
rest. This was the mouth of the cave and the source of light. He had discovered
that it was different from the other walls long before he had any thoughts of
his own, any conscious volitions. It had been an irresistible attraction before
ever his eyes opened and looked upon it. The light from it had beat upon his
sealed lids, and the eyes and the optic nerves had pulsated to little,
sparklike flashes, warm-coloured and strangely pleasing. The life of his body,
and of every fibre of his body, the life that was the very substance of his
body and that was apart from his own personal life, had yearned toward this
light and urged his body toward it in the same way that the cunning chemistry
of a plant urges it toward the sun.

Always, in the beginning, before his conscious life dawned, he had crawled
toward the mouth of the cave. And in this his brothers and sisters were one
with him. Never, in that period, did any of them crawl toward the dark corners
of the back-wall. The light drew them as if they were plants; the chemistry of
the life that composed them demanded the light as a necessity of being; and
their little puppet-bodies crawled blindly and chemically, like the tendrils of
a vine. Later on, when each developed individuality and became personally
conscious of impulsions and desires, the attraction of the light increased.
They were always crawling and sprawling toward it, and being driven back from
it by their mother.

It was in this way that the grey cub learned other attributes of his mother
than the soft, soothing, tongue. In his insistent crawling toward the light, he
discovered in her a nose that with a sharp nudge administered rebuke, and
later, a paw, that crushed him down and rolled him over and over with swift,
calculating stroke. Thus he learned hurt; and on top of it he learned to avoid
hurt, first, by not incurring the risk of it; and second, when he had incurred
the risk, by dodging and by retreating. These were conscious actions, and were
the results of his first generalisations upon the world. Before that he had
recoiled automatically from hurt, as he had crawled automatically toward the
light. After that he recoiled from hurt because he knew that it was
hurt.

knew

He was a fierce little cub. So were his brothers and sisters. It was to be
expected. He was a carnivorous animal. He came of a breed of meat-killers and
meat-eaters. His father and mother lived wholly upon meat. The milk he had
sucked with his first flickering life, was milk transformed directly from meat,
and now, at a month old, when his eyes had been open for but a week, he was
beginning himself to eat meat—meat half-digested by the she-wolf and
disgorged for the five growing cubs that already made too great demand upon her
breast.

But he was, further, the fiercest of the litter. He could make a louder rasping
growl than any of them. His tiny rages were much more terrible than theirs. It
was he that first learned the trick of rolling a fellow-cub over with a cunning
paw-stroke. And it was he that first gripped another cub by the ear and pulled
and tugged and growled through jaws tight-clenched. And certainly it was he
that caused the mother the most trouble in keeping her litter from the mouth of
the cave.

The fascination of the light for the grey cub increased from day to day. He was
perpetually departing on yard-long adventures toward the cave’s entrance,
and as perpetually being driven back. Only he did not know it for an entrance.
He did not know anything about entrances—passages whereby one goes from
one place to another place. He did not know any other place, much less of a way
to get there. So to him the entrance of the cave was a wall—a wall of
light. As the sun was to the outside dweller, this wall was to him the sun of
his world. It attracted him as a candle attracts a moth. He was always striving
to attain it. The life that was so swiftly expanding within him, urged him
continually toward the wall of light. The life that was within him knew that it
was the one way out, the way he was predestined to tread. But he himself did
not know anything about it. He did not know there was any outside at all.

There was one strange thing about this wall of light. His father (he had
already come to recognise his father as the one other dweller in the world, a
creature like his mother, who slept near the light and was a bringer of
meat)—his father had a way of walking right into the white far wall and
disappearing. The grey cub could not understand this. Though never permitted by
his mother to approach that wall, he had approached the other walls, and
encountered hard obstruction on the end of his tender nose. This hurt. And
after several such adventures, he left the walls alone. Without thinking about
it, he accepted this disappearing into the wall as a peculiarity of his father,
as milk and half-digested meat were peculiarities of his mother.

In fact, the grey cub was not given to thinking—at least, to the kind of
thinking customary of men. His brain worked in dim ways. Yet his conclusions
were as sharp and distinct as those achieved by men. He had a method of
accepting things, without questioning the why and wherefore. In reality, this
was the act of classification. He was never disturbed over why a thing
happened. How it happened was sufficient for him. Thus, when he had bumped his
nose on the back-wall a few times, he accepted that he would not disappear into
walls. In the same way he accepted that his father could disappear into walls.
But he was not in the least disturbed by desire to find out the reason for the
difference between his father and himself. Logic and physics were no part of
his mental make-up.

Like most creatures of the Wild, he early experienced famine. There came a time
when not only did the meat-supply cease, but the milk no longer came from his
mother’s breast. At first, the cubs whimpered and cried, but for the most
part they slept. It was not long before they were reduced to a coma of hunger.
There were no more spats and squabbles, no more tiny rages nor attempts at
growling; while the adventures toward the far white wall ceased altogether. The
cubs slept, while the life that was in them flickered and died down.

One Eye was desperate. He ranged far and wide, and slept but little in the lair
that had now become cheerless and miserable. The she-wolf, too, left her litter
and went out in search of meat. In the first days after the birth of the cubs,
One Eye had journeyed several times back to the Indian camp and robbed the
rabbit snares; but, with the melting of the snow and the opening of the
streams, the Indian camp had moved away, and that source of supply was closed
to him.

When the grey cub came back to life and again took interest in the far white
wall, he found that the population of his world had been reduced. Only one
sister remained to him. The rest were gone. As he grew stronger, he found
himself compelled to play alone, for the sister no longer lifted her head nor
moved about. His little body rounded out with the meat he now ate; but the food
had come too late for her. She slept continuously, a tiny skeleton flung round
with skin in which the flame flickered lower and lower and at last went out.

Then there came a time when the grey cub no longer saw his father appearing and
disappearing in the wall nor lying down asleep in the entrance. This had
happened at the end of a second and less severe famine. The she-wolf knew why
One Eye never came back, but there was no way by which she could tell what she
had seen to the grey cub. Hunting herself for meat, up the left fork of the
stream where lived the lynx, she had followed a day-old trail of One Eye. And
she had found him, or what remained of him, at the end of the trail. There were
many signs of the battle that had been fought, and of the lynx’s
withdrawal to her lair after having won the victory. Before she went away, the
she-wolf had found this lair, but the signs told her that the lynx was inside,
and she had not dared to venture in.

After that, the she-wolf in her hunting avoided the left fork. For she knew
that in the lynx’s lair was a litter of kittens, and she knew the lynx
for a fierce, bad-tempered creature and a terrible fighter. It was all very
well for half a dozen wolves to drive a lynx, spitting and bristling, up a
tree; but it was quite a different matter for a lone wolf to encounter a
lynx—especially when the lynx was known to have a litter of hungry
kittens at her back.

But the Wild is the Wild, and motherhood is motherhood, at all times fiercely
protective whether in the Wild or out of it; and the time was to come when the
she-wolf, for her grey cub’s sake, would venture the left fork, and the
lair in the rocks, and the lynx’s wrath.

By the time his mother began leaving the cave on hunting expeditions, the cub
had learned well the law that forbade his approaching the entrance. Not only
had this law been forcibly and many times impressed on him by his
mother’s nose and paw, but in him the instinct of fear was developing.
Never, in his brief cave-life, had he encountered anything of which to be
afraid. Yet fear was in him. It had come down to him from a remote ancestry
through a thousand thousand lives. It was a heritage he had received directly
from One Eye and the she-wolf; but to them, in turn, it had been passed down
through all the generations of wolves that had gone before. Fear!—that
legacy of the Wild which no animal may escape nor exchange for pottage.

So the grey cub knew fear, though he knew not the stuff of which fear was made.
Possibly he accepted it as one of the restrictions of life. For he had already
learned that there were such restrictions. Hunger he had known; and when he
could not appease his hunger he had felt restriction. The hard obstruction of
the cave-wall, the sharp nudge of his mother’s nose, the smashing stroke
of her paw, the hunger unappeased of several famines, had borne in upon him
that all was not freedom in the world, that to life there was limitations and
restraints. These limitations and restraints were laws. To be obedient to them
was to escape hurt and make for happiness.