C
HAPTER
3.
T
HE
G
REY
C
UB
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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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