CHAPTER III--THE HUNGER CRY

CHAPTER III--THE HUNGER CRY


The day began auspiciously. They had lost no dogs during the night, and
they swung out upon the trail and into the silence, the darkness, and the
cold with spirits that were fairly light. Bill seemed to have forgotten
his forebodings of the previous night, and even waxed facetious with the
dogs when, at midday, they overturned the sled on a bad piece of trail.

It was an awkward mix-up. The sled was upside down and jammed between a
tree-trunk and a huge rock, and they were forced to unharness the dogs in
order to straighten out the tangle. The two men were bent over the sled
and trying to right it, when Henry observed One Ear sidling away.

"Here, you, One Ear!" he cried, straightening up and turning around on
the dog.

But One Ear broke into a run across the snow, his traces trailing behind
him. And there, out in the snow of their back track, was the she-wolf
waiting for him. As he neared her, he became suddenly cautious. He
slowed down to an alert and mincing walk and then stopped. He regarded
her carefully and dubiously, yet desirefully. She seemed to smile at
him, showing her teeth in an ingratiating rather than a menacing way. She
moved toward him a few steps, playfully, and then halted. One Ear drew
near to her, still alert and cautious, his tail and ears in the air, his
head held high.

He tried to sniff noses with her, but she retreated playfully and coyly.
Every advance on his part was accompanied by a corresponding retreat on
her part. Step by step she was luring him away from the security of his
human companionship. Once, as though a warning had in vague ways flitted
through his intelligence, he turned his head and looked back at the
overturned sled, at his team-mates, and at the two men who were calling
to him.

But whatever idea was forming in his mind, was dissipated by the
she-wolf, who advanced upon him, sniffed noses with him for a fleeting
instant, and then resumed her coy retreat before his renewed advances.

In the meantime, Bill had bethought himself of the rifle. But it was
jammed beneath the overturned sled, and by the time Henry had helped him
to right the load, One Ear and the she-wolf were too close together and
the distance too great to risk a shot.

Too late One Ear learned his mistake. Before they saw the cause, the two
men saw him turn and start to run back toward them. Then, approaching at
right angles to the trail and cutting off his retreat they saw a dozen
wolves, lean and grey, bounding across the snow. On the instant, the she-
wolf's coyness and playfulness disappeared. With a snarl she sprang upon
One Ear. He thrust her off with his shoulder, and, his retreat cut off
and still intent on regaining the sled, he altered his course in an
attempt to circle around to it. More wolves were appearing every moment
and joining in the chase. The she-wolf was one leap behind One Ear and
holding her own.

"Where are you goin'?" Henry suddenly demanded, laying his hand on his
partner's arm.

Bill shook it off. "I won't stand it," he said. "They ain't a-goin' to
get any more of our dogs if I can help it."

Gun in hand, he plunged into the underbrush that lined the side of the
trail. His intention was apparent enough. Taking the sled as the centre
of the circle that One Ear was making, Bill planned to tap that circle at
a point in advance of the pursuit. With his rifle, in the broad
daylight, it might be possible for him to awe the wolves and save the
dog.

"Say, Bill!" Henry called after him. "Be careful! Don't take no
chances!"

Henry sat down on the sled and watched. There was nothing else for him
to do. Bill had already gone from sight; but now and again, appearing
and disappearing amongst the underbrush and the scattered clumps of
spruce, could be seen One Ear. Henry judged his case to be hopeless. The
dog was thoroughly alive to its danger, but it was running on the outer
circle while the wolf-pack was running on the inner and shorter circle.
It was vain to think of One Ear so outdistancing his pursuers as to be
able to cut across their circle in advance of them and to regain the
sled.

The different lines were rapidly approaching a point. Somewhere out
there in the snow, screened from his sight by trees and thickets, Henry
knew that the wolf-pack, One Ear, and Bill were coming together. All too
quickly, far more quickly than he had expected, it happened. He heard a
shot, then two shots, in rapid succession, and he knew that Bill's
ammunition was gone. Then he heard a great outcry of snarls and yelps.
He recognised One Ear's yell of pain and terror, and he heard a wolf-cry
that bespoke a stricken animal. And that was all. The snarls ceased.
The yelping died away. Silence settled down again over the lonely land.

He sat for a long while upon the sled. There was no need for him to go
and see what had happened. He knew it as though it had taken place
before his eyes. Once, he roused with a start and hastily got the axe
out from underneath the lashings. But for some time longer he sat and
brooded, the two remaining dogs crouching and trembling at his feet.

At last he arose in a weary manner, as though all the resilience had gone
out of his body, and proceeded to fasten the dogs to the sled. He passed
a rope over his shoulder, a man-trace, and pulled with the dogs. He did
not go far. At the first hint of darkness he hastened to make a camp,
and he saw to it that he had a generous supply of firewood. He fed the
dogs, cooked and ate his supper, and made his bed close to the fire.

But he was not destined to enjoy that bed. Before his eyes closed the
wolves had drawn too near for safety. It no longer required an effort of
the vision to see them. They were all about him and the fire, in a
narrow circle, and he could see them plainly in the firelight lying down,
sitting up, crawling forward on their bellies, or slinking back and
forth. They even slept. Here and there he could see one curled up in
the snow like a dog, taking the sleep that was now denied himself.

He kept the fire brightly blazing, for he knew that it alone intervened
between the flesh of his body and their hungry fangs. His two dogs
stayed close by him, one on either side, leaning against him for
protection, crying and whimpering, and at times snarling desperately when
a wolf approached a little closer than usual. At such moments, when his
dogs snarled, the whole circle would be agitated, the wolves coming to
their feet and pressing tentatively forward, a chorus of snarls and eager
yelps rising about him. Then the circle would lie down again, and here
and there a wolf would resume its broken nap.

But this circle had a continuous tendency to draw in upon him. Bit by
bit, an inch at a time, with here a wolf bellying forward, and there a
wolf bellying forward, the circle would narrow until the brutes were
almost within springing distance. Then he would seize brands from the
fire and hurl them into the pack. A hasty drawing back always resulted,
accompanied by angry yelps and frightened snarls when a well-aimed brand
struck and scorched a too daring animal.

Morning found the man haggard and worn, wide-eyed from want of sleep. He
cooked breakfast in the darkness, and at nine o'clock, when, with the
coming of daylight, the wolf-pack drew back, he set about the task he had
planned through the long hours of the night. Chopping down young
saplings, he made them cross-bars of a scaffold by lashing them high up
to the trunks of standing trees. Using the sled-lashing for a heaving
rope, and with the aid of the dogs, he hoisted the coffin to the top of
the scaffold.

"They got Bill, an' they may get me, but they'll sure never get you,
young man," he said, addressing the dead body in its tree-sepulchre.

Then he took the trail, the lightened sled bounding along behind the
willing dogs; for they, too, knew that safety lay open in the gaining of
Fort McGurry. The wolves were now more open in their pursuit, trotting
sedately behind and ranging along on either side, their red tongues
lolling out, their lean sides showing the undulating ribs with every
movement. They were very lean, mere skin-bags stretched over bony
frames, with strings for muscles--so lean that Henry found it in his mind
to marvel that they still kept their feet and did not collapse forthright
in the snow.

He did not dare travel until dark. At midday, not only did the sun warm
the southern horizon, but it even thrust its upper rim, pale and golden,
above the sky-line. He received it as a sign. The days were growing
longer. The sun was returning. But scarcely had the cheer of its light
departed, than he went into camp. There were still several hours of grey
daylight and sombre twilight, and he utilised them in chopping an
enormous supply of fire-wood.

With night came horror. Not only were the starving wolves growing
bolder, but lack of sleep was telling upon Henry. He dozed despite
himself, crouching by the fire, the blankets about his shoulders, the axe
between his knees, and on either side a dog pressing close against him.
He awoke once and saw in front of him, not a dozen feet away, a big grey
wolf, one of the largest of the pack. And even as he looked, the brute
deliberately stretched himself after the manner of a lazy dog, yawning
full in his face and looking upon him with a possessive eye, as if, in
truth, he were merely a delayed meal that was soon to be eaten.

This certitude was shown by the whole pack. Fully a score he could
count, staring hungrily at him or calmly sleeping in the snow. They
reminded him of children gathered about a spread table and awaiting
permission to begin to eat. And he was the food they were to eat! He
wondered how and when the meal would begin.

As he piled wood on the fire he discovered an appreciation of his own
body which he had never felt before. He watched his moving muscles and
was interested in the cunning mechanism of his fingers. By the light of
the fire he crooked his fingers slowly and repeatedly now one at a time,
now all together, spreading them wide or making quick gripping movements.
He studied the nail-formation, and prodded the finger-tips, now sharply,
and again softly, gauging the while the nerve-sensations produced. It
fascinated him, and he grew suddenly fond of this subtle flesh of his
that worked so beautifully and smoothly and delicately. Then he would
cast a glance of fear at the wolf-circle drawn expectantly about him, and
like a blow the realisation would strike him that this wonderful body of
his, this living flesh, was no more than so much meat, a quest of
ravenous animals, to be torn and slashed by their hungry fangs, to be
sustenance to them as the moose and the rabbit had often been sustenance
to him.

He came out of a doze that was half nightmare, to see the red-hued she-
wolf before him. She was not more than half a dozen feet away sitting in
the snow and wistfully regarding him. The two dogs were whimpering and
snarling at his feet, but she took no notice of them. She was looking at
the man, and for some time he returned her look. There was nothing
threatening about her. She looked at him merely with a great
wistfulness, but he knew it to be the wistfulness of an equally great
hunger. He was the food, and the sight of him excited in her the
gustatory sensations. Her mouth opened, the saliva drooled forth, and
she licked her chops with the pleasure of anticipation.

A spasm of fear went through him. He reached hastily for a brand to
throw at her. But even as he reached, and before his fingers had closed
on the missile, she sprang back into safety; and he knew that she was
used to having things thrown at her. She had snarled as she sprang away,
baring her white fangs to their roots, all her wistfulness vanishing,
being replaced by a carnivorous malignity that made him shudder. He
glanced at the hand that held the brand, noticing the cunning delicacy of
the fingers that gripped it, how they adjusted themselves to all the
inequalities of the surface, curling over and under and about the rough
wood, and one little finger, too close to the burning portion of the
brand, sensitively and automatically writhing back from the hurtful heat
to a cooler gripping-place; and in the same instant he seemed to see a
vision of those same sensitive and delicate fingers being crushed and
torn by the white teeth of the she-wolf. Never had he been so fond of
this body of his as now when his tenure of it was so precarious.

All night, with burning brands, he fought off the hungry pack. When he
dozed despite himself, the whimpering and snarling of the dogs aroused
him. Morning came, but for the first time the light of day failed to
scatter the wolves. The man waited in vain for them to go. They
remained in a circle about him and his fire, displaying an arrogance of
possession that shook his courage born of the morning light.

He made one desperate attempt to pull out on the trail. But the moment
he left the protection of the fire, the boldest wolf leaped for him, but
leaped short. He saved himself by springing back, the jaws snapping
together a scant six inches from his thigh. The rest of the pack was now
up and surging upon him, and a throwing of firebrands right and left was
necessary to drive them back to a respectful distance.

Even in the daylight he did not dare leave the fire to chop fresh wood.
Twenty feet away towered a huge dead spruce. He spent half the day
extending his campfire to the tree, at any moment a half dozen burning
faggots ready at hand to fling at his enemies. Once at the tree, he
studied the surrounding forest in order to fell the tree in the direction
of the most firewood.

The night was a repetition of the night before, save that the need for
sleep was becoming overpowering. The snarling of his dogs was losing its
efficacy. Besides, they were snarling all the time, and his benumbed and
drowsy senses no longer took note of changing pitch and intensity. He
awoke with a start. The she-wolf was less than a yard from him.
Mechanically, at short range, without letting go of it, he thrust a brand
full into her open and snarling mouth. She sprang away, yelling with
pain, and while he took delight in the smell of burning flesh and hair,
he watched her shaking her head and growling wrathfully a score of feet
away.

But this time, before he dozed again, he tied a burning pine-knot to his
right hand. His eyes were closed but few minutes when the burn of the
flame on his flesh awakened him. For several hours he adhered to this
programme. Every time he was thus awakened he drove back the wolves with
flying brands, replenished the fire, and rearranged the pine-knot on his
hand. All worked well, but there came a time when he fastened the pine-
knot insecurely. As his eyes closed it fell away from his hand.

He dreamed. It seemed to him that he was in Fort McGurry. It was warm
and comfortable, and he was playing cribbage with the Factor. Also, it
seemed to him that the fort was besieged by wolves. They were howling at
the very gates, and sometimes he and the Factor paused from the game to
listen and laugh at the futile efforts of the wolves to get in. And
then, so strange was the dream, there was a crash. The door was burst
open. He could see the wolves flooding into the big living-room of the
fort. They were leaping straight for him and the Factor. With the
bursting open of the door, the noise of their howling had increased
tremendously. This howling now bothered him. His dream was merging into
something else--he knew not what; but through it all, following him,
persisted the howling.

And then he awoke to find the howling real. There was a great snarling
and yelping. The wolves were rushing him. They were all about him and
upon him. The teeth of one had closed upon his arm. Instinctively he
leaped into the fire, and as he leaped, he felt the sharp slash of teeth
that tore through the flesh of his leg. Then began a fire fight. His
stout mittens temporarily protected his hands, and he scooped live coals
into the air in all directions, until the campfire took on the semblance
of a volcano.

But it could not last long. His face was blistering in the heat, his
eyebrows and lashes were singed off, and the heat was becoming unbearable
to his feet. With a flaming brand in each hand, he sprang to the edge of
the fire. The wolves had been driven back. On every side, wherever the
live coals had fallen, the snow was sizzling, and every little while a
retiring wolf, with wild leap and snort and snarl, announced that one
such live coal had been stepped upon.

Flinging his brands at the nearest of his enemies, the man thrust his
smouldering mittens into the snow and stamped about to cool his feet. His
two dogs were missing, and he well knew that they had served as a course
in the protracted meal which had begun days before with Fatty, the last
course of which would likely be himself in the days to follow.

"You ain't got me yet!" he cried, savagely shaking his fist at the hungry
beasts; and at the sound of his voice the whole circle was agitated,
there was a general snarl, and the she-wolf slid up close to him across
the snow and watched him with hungry wistfulness.

He set to work to carry out a new idea that had come to him. He extended
the fire into a large circle. Inside this circle he crouched, his
sleeping outfit under him as a protection against the melting snow. When
he had thus disappeared within his shelter of flame, the whole pack came
curiously to the rim of the fire to see what had become of him. Hitherto
they had been denied access to the fire, and they now settled down in a
close-drawn circle, like so many dogs, blinking and yawning and
stretching their lean bodies in the unaccustomed warmth. Then the she-
wolf sat down, pointed her nose at a star, and began to howl. One by one
the wolves joined her, till the whole pack, on haunches, with noses
pointed skyward, was howling its hunger cry.

Dawn came, and daylight. The fire was burning low. The fuel had run
out, and there was need to get more. The man attempted to step out of
his circle of flame, but the wolves surged to meet him. Burning brands
made them spring aside, but they no longer sprang back. In vain he
strove to drive them back. As he gave up and stumbled inside his circle,
a wolf leaped for him, missed, and landed with all four feet in the
coals. It cried out with terror, at the same time snarling, and
scrambled back to cool its paws in the snow.

The man sat down on his blankets in a crouching position. His body
leaned forward from the hips. His shoulders, relaxed and drooping, and
his head on his knees advertised that he had given up the struggle. Now
and again he raised his head to note the dying down of the fire. The
circle of flame and coals was breaking into segments with openings in
between. These openings grew in size, the segments diminished.

"I guess you can come an' get me any time," he mumbled. "Anyway, I'm
goin' to sleep."

Once he awakened, and in an opening in the circle, directly in front of
him, he saw the she-wolf gazing at him.

Again he awakened, a little later, though it seemed hours to him. A
mysterious change had taken place--so mysterious a change that he was
shocked wider awake. Something had happened. He could not understand at
first. Then he discovered it. The wolves were gone. Remained only the
trampled snow to show how closely they had pressed him. Sleep was
welling up and gripping him again, his head was sinking down upon his
knees, when he roused with a sudden start.

There were cries of men, and churn of sleds, the creaking of harnesses,
and the eager whimpering of straining dogs. Four sleds pulled in from
the river bed to the camp among the trees. Half a dozen men were about
the man who crouched in the centre of the dying fire. They were shaking
and prodding him into consciousness. He looked at them like a drunken
man and maundered in strange, sleepy speech.

"Red she-wolf. . . . Come in with the dogs at feedin' time. . . . First
she ate the dog-food. . . . Then she ate the dogs. . . . An' after that
she ate Bill. . . . "

"Where's Lord Alfred?" one of the men bellowed in his ear, shaking him
roughly.

He shook his head slowly. "No, she didn't eat him. . . . He's roostin'
in a tree at the last camp."

"Dead?" the man shouted.

"An' in a box," Henry answered. He jerked his shoulder petulantly away
from the grip of his questioner. "Say, you lemme alone. . . . I'm jes'
plump tuckered out. . . . Goo' night, everybody."

His eyes fluttered and went shut. His chin fell forward on his chest.
And even as they eased him down upon the blankets his snores were rising
on the frosty air.

But there was another sound. Far and faint it was, in the remote
distance, the cry of the hungry wolf-pack as it took the trail of other
meat than the man it had just missed.

PART II - - - CHAPTER I

CHAPTER I--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.