White Fang
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.
CHAPTER II
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