White Fang
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