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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 The she-wolf was the first to hear the other men coming and the first to make a retreat. She runs out over the snow, flanked on either side by two wolves. On her right side there is a gaunt, older wolf, with only one eye. On the left is one of the leaders of the pack. Both of them crowd her, and she fights them off with sharp slashes of teeth and growls. At times, a young three-year-old wolf also darts up, edging between her and the leader. If there hadn't been the famine, all the wolves would have broken up, turning to fighting and then to love-making. But with the lack of food, the wolves run together, searching. They come along a big bull moose, and take him down, feasting upon the eight hundred pounds of flesh. The famine is over. The wolf pack splits up and the she-wolf, with the young leader on her left, the older wolf on her right, leads half of the pack down to the Mackenzie River. Bit by bit the pack splits apart until it is just the three wolves and the three-year-old wolf. The three males fight with each other. The two older wolves kill the younger one, and, that finished, the older wolf kills the younger leader. Then the she-wolf and the one-eyed wolf run together. The she-wolf seems to be searching for something; she looks longingly at the human settlement and runs and runs, searching. After two days of lurking about the Indian camp and robbing rabbit snares, someone shoots a gun at them and they retreat. The she-wolf finds what she is looking for--a lair in the forest. She creeps in, and there she has a litter of pups. One Eye goes in search of food and brings home a porcupine that a lynx had half killed.

