CHAPTER III--THE GREY CUB

CHAPTER III--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.