PART
2
31
C
HAPTER
1.
T
HE
B
ATTLE
O
F
T
HE
F
ANGS
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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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,
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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
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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.
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