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title: Part II
class: part
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### The Battle of the Fangs

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.

### The Lair

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.

### The Grey Cub

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.

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.

### The Wall of the World

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.

He did not reason the question out in this man fashion. He
merely classified the things that hurt and the things that did not hurt.
And after such classification he avoided the things that hurt, the restrictions
and restraints, in order to enjoy the satisfactions and the remunerations
of life.

Thus it was that in obedience to the law laid down by his mother,
and in obedience to the law of that unknown and nameless thing, fear,
he kept away from the mouth of the cave. It remained to him a
white wall of light. When his mother was absent, he slept most
of the time, while during the intervals that he was awake he kept very
quiet, suppressing the whimpering cries that tickled in his throat and
strove for noise.

Once, lying awake, he heard a strange sound in the white wall.
He did not know that it was a wolverine, standing outside, all a-trembling
with its own daring, and cautiously scenting out the contents of the
cave. The cub knew only that the sniff was strange, a something
unclassified, therefore unknown and terrible—for the unknown was
one of the chief elements that went into the making of fear.

The hair bristled upon the grey cub’s back, but it bristled
silently. How was he to know that this thing that sniffed was
a thing at which to bristle? It was not born of any knowledge
of his, yet it was the visible expression of the fear that was in him,
and for which, in his own life, there was no accounting. But fear
was accompanied by another instinct—that of concealment.
The cub was in a frenzy of terror, yet he lay without movement or sound,
frozen, petrified into immobility, to all appearances dead. His
mother, coming home, growled as she smelt the wolverine’s track,
and bounded into the cave and licked and nozzled him with undue vehemence
of affection. And the cub felt that somehow he had escaped a great
hurt.

But there were other forces at work in the cub, the greatest of which
was growth. Instinct and law demanded of him obedience.
But growth demanded disobedience. His mother and fear impelled
him to keep away from the white wall. Growth is life, and life
is for ever destined to make for light. So there was no damming
up the tide of life that was rising within him—rising with every
mouthful of meat he swallowed, with every breath he drew. In the
end, one day, fear and obedience were swept away by the rush of life,
and the cub straddled and sprawled toward the entrance.

Unlike any other wall with which he had had experience, this wall
seemed to recede from him as he approached. No hard surface collided
with the tender little nose he thrust out tentatively before him.
The substance of the wall seemed as permeable and yielding as light.
And as condition, in his eyes, had the seeming of form, so he entered
into what had been wall to him and bathed in the substance that composed
it.

It was bewildering. He was sprawling through solidity.
And ever the light grew brighter. Fear urged him to go back, but
growth drove him on. Suddenly he found himself at the mouth of
the cave. The wall, inside which he had thought himself, as suddenly
leaped back before him to an immeasurable distance. The light
had become painfully bright. He was dazzled by it. Likewise
he was made dizzy by this abrupt and tremendous extension of space.
Automatically, his eyes were adjusting themselves to the brightness,
focusing themselves to meet the increased distance of objects.
At first, the wall had leaped beyond his vision. He now saw it
again; but it had taken upon itself a remarkable remoteness. Also,
its appearance had changed. It was now a variegated wall, composed
of the trees that fringed the stream, the opposing mountain that towered
above the trees, and the sky that out-towered the mountain.

A great fear came upon him. This was more of the terrible unknown.
He crouched down on the lip of the cave and gazed out on the world.
He was very much afraid. Because it was unknown, it was hostile
to him. Therefore the hair stood up on end along his back and
his lips wrinkled weakly in an attempt at a ferocious and intimidating
snarl. Out of his puniness and fright he challenged and menaced
the whole wide world.

Nothing happened. He continued to gaze, and in his interest
he forgot to snarl. Also, he forgot to be afraid. For the
time, fear had been routed by growth, while growth had assumed the guise
of curiosity. He began to notice near objects—an open portion
of the stream that flashed in the sun, the blasted pine-tree that stood
at the base of the slope, and the slope itself, that ran right up to
him and ceased two feet beneath the lip of the cave on which he crouched.

Now the grey cub had lived all his days on a level floor. He
had never experienced the hurt of a fall. He did not know what
a fall was. So he stepped boldly out upon the air. His hind-legs
still rested on the cave-lip, so he fell forward head downward.
The earth struck him a harsh blow on the nose that made him yelp.
Then he began rolling down the slope, over and over. He was in
a panic of terror. The unknown had caught him at last. It
had gripped savagely hold of him and was about to wreak upon him some
terrific hurt. Growth was now routed by fear, and he ki-yi’d
like any frightened puppy.

The unknown bore him on he knew not to what frightful hurt, and he
yelped and ki-yi’d unceasingly. This was a different proposition
from crouching in frozen fear while the unknown lurked just alongside.
Now the unknown had caught tight hold of him. Silence would do
no good. Besides, it was not fear, but terror, that convulsed
him.

But the slope grew more gradual, and its base was grass-covered.
Here the cub lost momentum. When at last he came to a stop, he
gave one last agonised yell and then a long, whimpering wail.
Also, and quite as a matter of course, as though in his life he had
already made a thousand toilets, he proceeded to lick away the dry clay
that soiled him.

After that he sat up and gazed about him, as might the first man
of the earth who landed upon Mars. The cub had broken through
the wall of the world, the unknown had let go its hold of him, and here
he was without hurt. But the first man on Mars would have experienced
less unfamiliarity than did he. Without any antecedent knowledge,
without any warning whatever that such existed, he found himself an
explorer in a totally new world.

Now that the terrible unknown had let go of him, he forgot that the
unknown had any terrors. He was aware only of curiosity in all
the things about him. He inspected the grass beneath him, the
moss-berry plant just beyond, and the dead trunk of the blasted pine
that stood on the edge of an open space among the trees. A squirrel,
running around the base of the trunk, came full upon him, and gave him
a great fright. He cowered down and snarled. But the squirrel
was as badly scared. It ran up the tree, and from a point of safety
chattered back savagely.

This helped the cub’s courage, and though the woodpecker he
next encountered gave him a start, he proceeded confidently on his way.
Such was his confidence, that when a moose-bird impudently hopped up
to him, he reached out at it with a playful paw. The result was
a sharp peck on the end of his nose that made him cower down and ki-yi.
The noise he made was too much for the moose-bird, who sought safety
in flight.

But the cub was learning. His misty little mind had already
made an unconscious classification. There were live things and
things not alive. Also, he must watch out for the live things.
The things not alive remained always in one place, but the live things
moved about, and there was no telling what they might do. The
thing to expect of them was the unexpected, and for this he must be
prepared.

He travelled very clumsily. He ran into sticks and things.
A twig that he thought a long way off, would the next instant hit him
on the nose or rake along his ribs. There were inequalities of
surface. Sometimes he overstepped and stubbed his nose.
Quite as often he understepped and stubbed his feet. Then there
were the pebbles and stones that turned under him when he trod upon
them; and from them he came to know that the things not alive were not
all in the same state of stable equilibrium as was his cave—also,
that small things not alive were more liable than large things to fall
down or turn over. But with every mishap he was learning.
The longer he walked, the better he walked. He was adjusting himself.
He was learning to calculate his own muscular movements, to know his
physical limitations, to measure distances between objects, and between
objects and himself.

His was the luck of the beginner. Born to be a hunter of meat
(though he did not know it), he blundered upon meat just outside his
own cave-door on his first foray into the world. It was by sheer
blundering that he chanced upon the shrewdly hidden ptarmigan nest.
He fell into it. He had essayed to walk along the trunk of a fallen
pine. The rotten bark gave way under his feet, and with a despairing
yelp he pitched down the rounded crescent, smashed through the leafage
and stalks of a small bush, and in the heart of the bush, on the ground,
fetched up in the midst of seven ptarmigan chicks.

They made noises, and at first he was frightened at them. Then
he perceived that they were very little, and he became bolder.
They moved. He placed his paw on one, and its movements were accelerated.
This was a source of enjoyment to him. He smelled it. He
picked it up in his mouth. It struggled and tickled his tongue.
At the same time he was made aware of a sensation of hunger. His
jaws closed together. There was a crunching of fragile bones,
and warm blood ran in his mouth. The taste of it was good.
This was meat, the same as his mother gave him, only it was alive between
his teeth and therefore better. So he ate the ptarmigan.
Nor did he stop till he had devoured the whole brood. Then he
licked his chops in quite the same way his mother did, and began to
crawl out of the bush.

He encountered a feathered whirlwind. He was confused and blinded
by the rush of it and the beat of angry wings. He hid his head
between his paws and yelped. The blows increased. The mother
ptarmigan was in a fury. Then he became angry. He rose up,
snarling, striking out with his paws. He sank his tiny teeth into
one of the wings and pulled and tugged sturdily. The ptarmigan
struggled against him, showering blows upon him with her free wing.
It was his first battle. He was elated. He forgot all about
the unknown. He no longer was afraid of anything. He was
fighting, tearing at a live thing that was striking at him. Also,
this live thing was meat. The lust to kill was on him. He
had just destroyed little live things. He would now destroy a
big live thing. He was too busy and happy to know that he was
happy. He was thrilling and exulting in ways new to him and greater
to him than any he had known before.

He held on to the wing and growled between his tight-clenched teeth.
The ptarmigan dragged him out of the bush. When she turned and
tried to drag him back into the bush’s shelter, he pulled her
away from it and on into the open. And all the time she was making
outcry and striking with her free wing, while feathers were flying like
a snow-fall. The pitch to which he was aroused was tremendous.
All the fighting blood of his breed was up in him and surging through
him. This was living, though he did not know it. He was
realising his own meaning in the world; he was doing that for which
he was made—killing meat and battling to kill it. He was
justifying his existence, than which life can do no greater; for life
achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was
equipped to do.

After a time, the ptarmigan ceased her struggling. He still
held her by the wing, and they lay on the ground and looked at each
other. He tried to growl threateningly, ferociously. She
pecked on his nose, which by now, what of previous adventures was sore.
He winced but held on. She pecked him again and again. From
wincing he went to whimpering. He tried to back away from her,
oblivious to the fact that by his hold on her he dragged her after him.
A rain of pecks fell on his ill-used nose. The flood of fight
ebbed down in him, and, releasing his prey, he turned tail and scampered
on across the open in inglorious retreat.

He lay down to rest on the other side of the open, near the edge
of the bushes, his tongue lolling out, his chest heaving and panting,
his nose still hurting him and causing him to continue his whimper.
But as he lay there, suddenly there came to him a feeling as of something
terrible impending. The unknown with all its terrors rushed upon
him, and he shrank back instinctively into the shelter of the bush.
As he did so, a draught of air fanned him, and a large, winged body
swept ominously and silently past. A hawk, driving down out of
the blue, had barely missed him.

While he lay in the bush, recovering from his fright and peering
fearfully out, the mother-ptarmigan on the other side of the open space
fluttered out of the ravaged nest. It was because of her loss
that she paid no attention to the winged bolt of the sky. But
the cub saw, and it was a warning and a lesson to him—the swift
downward swoop of the hawk, the short skim of its body just above the
ground, the strike of its talons in the body of the ptarmigan, the ptarmigan’s
squawk of agony and fright, and the hawk’s rush upward into the
blue, carrying the ptarmigan away with it.

It was a long time before the cub left its shelter. He had
learned much. Live things were meat. They were good to eat.
Also, live things when they were large enough, could give hurt.
It was better to eat small live things like ptarmigan chicks, and to
let alone large live things like ptarmigan hens. Nevertheless
he felt a little prick of ambition, a sneaking desire to have another
battle with that ptarmigan hen—only the hawk had carried her away.
May be there were other ptarmigan hens. He would go and see.

He came down a shelving bank to the stream. He had never seen
water before. The footing looked good. There were no inequalities
of surface. He stepped boldly out on it; and went down, crying
with fear, into the embrace of the unknown. It was cold, and he
gasped, breathing quickly. The water rushed into his lungs instead
of the air that had always accompanied his act of breathing. The
suffocation he experienced was like the pang of death. To him
it signified death. He had no conscious knowledge of death, but
like every animal of the Wild, he possessed the instinct of death.
To him it stood as the greatest of hurts. It was the very essence
of the unknown; it was the sum of the terrors of the unknown, the one
culminating and unthinkable catastrophe that could happen to him, about
which he knew nothing and about which he feared everything.

He came to the surface, and the sweet air rushed into his open mouth.
He did not go down again. Quite as though it had been a long-established
custom of his he struck out with all his legs and began to swim.
The near bank was a yard away; but he had come up with his back to it,
and the first thing his eyes rested upon was the opposite bank, toward
which he immediately began to swim. The stream was a small one,
but in the pool it widened out to a score of feet.

Midway in the passage, the current picked up the cub and swept him
downstream. He was caught in the miniature rapid at the bottom
of the pool. Here was little chance for swimming. The quiet
water had become suddenly angry. Sometimes he was under, sometimes
on top. At all times he was in violent motion, now being turned
over or around, and again, being smashed against a rock. And with
every rock he struck, he yelped. His progress was a series of
yelps, from which might have been adduced the number of rocks he encountered.

Below the rapid was a second pool, and here, captured by the eddy,
he was gently borne to the bank, and as gently deposited on a bed of
gravel. He crawled frantically clear of the water and lay down.
He had learned some more about the world. Water was not alive.
Yet it moved. Also, it looked as solid as the earth, but was without
any solidity at all. His conclusion was that things were not always
what they appeared to be. The cub’s fear of the unknown
was an inherited distrust, and it had now been strengthened by experience.
Thenceforth, in the nature of things, he would possess an abiding distrust
of appearances. He would have to learn the reality of a thing
before he could put his faith into it.

One other adventure was destined for him that day. He had recollected
that there was such a thing in the world as his mother. And then
there came to him a feeling that he wanted her more than all the rest
of the things in the world. Not only was his body tired with the
adventures it had undergone, but his little brain was equally tired.
In all the days he had lived it had not worked so hard as on this one
day. Furthermore, he was sleepy. So he started out to look
for the cave and his mother, feeling at the same time an overwhelming
rush of loneliness and helplessness.

He was sprawling along between some bushes, when he heard a sharp
intimidating cry. There was a flash of yellow before his eyes.
He saw a weasel leaping swiftly away from him. It was a small
live thing, and he had no fear. Then, before him, at his feet,
he saw an extremely small live thing, only several inches long, a young
weasel, that, like himself, had disobediently gone out adventuring.
It tried to retreat before him. He turned it over with his paw.
It made a queer, grating noise. The next moment the flash of yellow
reappeared before his eyes. He heard again the intimidating cry,
and at the same instant received a sharp blow on the side of the neck
and felt the sharp teeth of the mother-weasel cut into his flesh.

While he yelped and ki-yi’d and scrambled backward, he saw
the mother-weasel leap upon her young one and disappear with it into
the neighbouring thicket. The cut of her teeth in his neck still
hurt, but his feelings were hurt more grievously, and he sat down and
weakly whimpered. This mother-weasel was so small and so savage.
He was yet to learn that for size and weight the weasel was the most
ferocious, vindictive, and terrible of all the killers of the Wild.
But a portion of this knowledge was quickly to be his.

He was still whimpering when the mother-weasel reappeared.
She did not rush him, now that her young one was safe. She approached
more cautiously, and the cub had full opportunity to observe her lean,
snakelike body, and her head, erect, eager, and snake-like itself.
Her sharp, menacing cry sent the hair bristling along his back, and
he snarled warningly at her. She came closer and closer.
There was a leap, swifter than his unpractised sight, and the lean,
yellow body disappeared for a moment out of the field of his vision.
The next moment she was at his throat, her teeth buried in his hair
and flesh.

At first he snarled and tried to fight; but he was very young, and
this was only his first day in the world, and his snarl became a whimper,
his fight a struggle to escape. The weasel never relaxed her hold.
She hung on, striving to press down with her teeth to the great vein
where his life-blood bubbled. The weasel was a drinker of blood,
and it was ever her preference to drink from the throat of life itself.

The grey cub would have died, and there would have been no story
to write about him, had not the she-wolf come bounding through the bushes.
The weasel let go the cub and flashed at the she-wolf’s throat,
missing, but getting a hold on the jaw instead. The she-wolf flirted
her head like the snap of a whip, breaking the weasel’s hold and
flinging it high in the air. And, still in the air, the she-wolf’s
jaws closed on the lean, yellow body, and the weasel knew death between
the crunching teeth.

The cub experienced another access of affection on the part of his
mother. Her joy at finding him seemed even greater than his joy
at being found. She nozzled him and caressed him and licked the
cuts made in him by the weasel’s teeth. Then, between them,
mother and cub, they ate the blood-drinker, and after that went back
to the cave and slept.

### The Law of Meat

The cub’s development was rapid. He rested for two days,
and then ventured forth from the cave again. It was on this adventure
that he found the young weasel whose mother he had helped eat, and he
saw to it that the young weasel went the way of its mother. But
on this trip he did not get lost. When he grew tired, he found
his way back to the cave and slept. And every day thereafter found
him out and ranging a wider area.

He began to get accurate measurement of his strength and his weakness,
and to know when to be bold and when to be cautious. He found
it expedient to be cautious all the time, except for the rare moments,
when, assured of his own intrepidity, he abandoned himself to petty
rages and lusts.

He was always a little demon of fury when he chanced upon a stray
ptarmigan. Never did he fail to respond savagely to the chatter
of the squirrel he had first met on the blasted pine. While the
sight of a moose-bird almost invariably put him into the wildest of
rages; for he never forgot the peck on the nose he had received from
the first of that ilk he encountered.

But there were times when even a moose-bird failed to affect him,
and those were times when he felt himself to be in danger from some
other prowling meat hunter. He never forgot the hawk, and its
moving shadow always sent him crouching into the nearest thicket.
He no longer sprawled and straddled, and already he was developing the
gait of his mother, slinking and furtive, apparently without exertion,
yet sliding along with a swiftness that was as deceptive as it was imperceptible.

In the matter of meat, his luck had been all in the beginning.
The seven ptarmigan chicks and the baby weasel represented the sum of
his killings. His desire to kill strengthened with the days, and
he cherished hungry ambitions for the squirrel that chattered so volubly
and always informed all wild creatures that the wolf-cub was approaching.
But as birds flew in the air, squirrels could climb trees, and the cub
could only try to crawl unobserved upon the squirrel when it was on
the ground.

The cub entertained a great respect for his mother. She could
get meat, and she never failed to bring him his share. Further,
she was unafraid of things. It did not occur to him that this
fearlessness was founded upon experience and knowledge. Its effect
on him was that of an impression of power. His mother represented
power; and as he grew older he felt this power in the sharper admonishment
of her paw; while the reproving nudge of her nose gave place to the
slash of her fangs. For this, likewise, he respected his mother.
She compelled obedience from him, and the older he grew the shorter
grew her temper.

Famine came again, and the cub with clearer consciousness knew once
more the bite of hunger. The she-wolf ran herself thin in the
quest for meat. She rarely slept any more in the cave, spending
most of her time on the meat-trail, and spending it vainly. This
famine was not a long one, but it was severe while it lasted.
The cub found no more milk in his mother’s breast, nor did he
get one mouthful of meat for himself.

Before, he had hunted in play, for the sheer joyousness of it; now
he hunted in deadly earnestness, and found nothing. Yet the failure
of it accelerated his development. He studied the habits of the
squirrel with greater carefulness, and strove with greater craft to
steal upon it and surprise it. He studied the wood-mice and tried
to dig them out of their burrows; and he learned much about the ways
of moose-birds and woodpeckers. And there came a day when the
hawk’s shadow did not drive him crouching into the bushes.
He had grown stronger and wiser, and more confident. Also, he
was desperate. So he sat on his haunches, conspicuously in an
open space, and challenged the hawk down out of the sky. For he
knew that there, floating in the blue above him, was meat, the meat
his stomach yearned after so insistently. But the hawk refused
to come down and give battle, and the cub crawled away into a thicket
and whimpered his disappointment and hunger.

The famine broke. The she-wolf brought home meat. It
was strange meat, different from any she had ever brought before.
It was a lynx kitten, partly grown, like the cub, but not so large.
And it was all for him. His mother had satisfied her hunger elsewhere;
though he did not know that it was the rest of the lynx litter that
had gone to satisfy her. Nor did he know the desperateness of
her deed. He knew only that the velvet-furred kitten was meat,
and he ate and waxed happier with every mouthful.

A full stomach conduces to inaction, and the cub lay in the cave,
sleeping against his mother’s side. He was aroused by her
snarling. Never had he heard her snarl so terribly. Possibly
in her whole life it was the most terrible snarl she ever gave.
There was reason for it, and none knew it better than she. A lynx’s
lair is not despoiled with impunity. In the full glare of the
afternoon light, crouching in the entrance of the cave, the cub saw
the lynx-mother. The hair rippled up along his back at the sight.
Here was fear, and it did not require his instinct to tell him of it.
And if sight alone were not sufficient, the cry of rage the intruder
gave, beginning with a snarl and rushing abruptly upward into a hoarse
screech, was convincing enough in itself.

The cub felt the prod of the life that was in him, and stood up and
snarled valiantly by his mother’s side. But she thrust him
ignominiously away and behind her. Because of the low-roofed entrance
the lynx could not leap in, and when she made a crawling rush of it
the she-wolf sprang upon her and pinned her down. The cub saw
little of the battle. There was a tremendous snarling and spitting
and screeching. The two animals threshed about, the lynx ripping
and tearing with her claws and using her teeth as well, while the she-wolf
used her teeth alone.

Once, the cub sprang in and sank his teeth into the hind leg of the
lynx. He clung on, growling savagely. Though he did not
know it, by the weight of his body he clogged the action of the leg
and thereby saved his mother much damage. A change in the battle
crushed him under both their bodies and wrenched loose his hold.
The next moment the two mothers separated, and, before they rushed together
again, the lynx lashed out at the cub with a huge fore-paw that ripped
his shoulder open to the bone and sent him hurtling sidewise against
the wall. Then was added to the uproar the cub’s shrill
yelp of pain and fright. But the fight lasted so long that he
had time to cry himself out and to experience a second burst of courage;
and the end of the battle found him again clinging to a hind-leg and
furiously growling between his teeth.

The lynx was dead. But the she-wolf was very weak and sick.
At first she caressed the cub and licked his wounded shoulder; but the
blood she had lost had taken with it her strength, and for all of a
day and a night she lay by her dead foe’s side, without movement,
scarcely breathing. For a week she never left the cave, except
for water, and then her movements were slow and painful. At the
end of that time the lynx was devoured, while the she-wolf’s wounds
had healed sufficiently to permit her to take the meat-trail again.

The cub’s shoulder was stiff and sore, and for some time he
limped from the terrible slash he had received. But the world
now seemed changed. He went about in it with greater confidence,
with a feeling of prowess that had not been his in the days before the
battle with the lynx. He had looked upon life in a more ferocious
aspect; he had fought; he had buried his teeth in the flesh of a foe;
and he had survived. And because of all this, he carried himself
more boldly, with a touch of defiance that was new in him. He
was no longer afraid of minor things, and much of his timidity had vanished,
though the unknown never ceased to press upon him with its mysteries
and terrors, intangible and ever-menacing.

He began to accompany his mother on the meat-trail, and he saw much
of the killing of meat and began to play his part in it. And in
his own dim way he learned the law of meat. There were two kinds
of life—his own kind and the other kind. His own kind included
his mother and himself. The other kind included all live things
that moved. But the other kind was divided. One portion
was what his own kind killed and ate. This portion was composed
of the non-killers and the small killers. The other portion killed
and ate his own kind, or was killed and eaten by his own kind.
And out of this classification arose the law. The aim of life
was meat. Life itself was meat. Life lived on life.
There were the eaters and the eaten. The law was: EAT OR BE EATEN.
He did not formulate the law in clear, set terms and moralise about
it. He did not even think the law; he merely lived the law without
thinking about it at all.

He saw the law operating around him on every side. He had eaten
the ptarmigan chicks. The hawk had eaten the ptarmigan-mother.
The hawk would also have eaten him. Later, when he had grown more
formidable, he wanted to eat the hawk. He had eaten the lynx kitten.
The lynx-mother would have eaten him had she not herself been killed
and eaten. And so it went. The law was being lived about
him by all live things, and he himself was part and parcel of the law.
He was a killer. His only food was meat, live meat, that ran away
swiftly before him, or flew into the air, or climbed trees, or hid in
the ground, or faced him and fought with him, or turned the tables and
ran after him.

Had the cub thought in man-fashion, he might have epitomised life
as a voracious appetite and the world as a place wherein ranged a multitude
of appetites, pursuing and being pursued, hunting and being hunted,
eating and being eaten, all in blindness and confusion, with violence
and disorder, a chaos of gluttony and slaughter, ruled over by chance,
merciless, planless, endless.

But the cub did not think in man-fashion. He did not look at
things with wide vision. He was single-purposed, and entertained
but one thought or desire at a time. Besides the law of meat,
there were a myriad other and lesser laws for him to learn and obey.
The world was filled with surprise. The stir of the life that
was in him, the play of his muscles, was an unending happiness.
To run down meat was to experience thrills and elations. His rages
and battles were pleasures. Terror itself, and the mystery of
the unknown, led to his living.

And there were easements and satisfactions. To have a full
stomach, to doze lazily in the sunshine—such things were remuneration
in full for his ardours and toils, while his ardours and tolls were
in themselves self-remunerative. They were expressions of life,
and life is always happy when it is expressing itself. So the
cub had no quarrel with his hostile environment. He was very much
alive, very happy, and very proud of himself.