CHAPTER II--THE LAIR
For two days the she-wolf and One Eye hung about the Indian camp. He wasworried and apprehensive, yet the camp lured his mate and she was loathto depart. But when, one morning, the air was rent with the report of arifle close at hand, and a bullet smashed against a tree trunk severalinches from One Eye's head, they hesitated no more, but went off on along, 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 tofind the thing for which she searched had now become imperative. She wasgetting very heavy, and could run but slowly. Once, in the pursuit of arabbit, which she ordinarily would have caught with ease, she gave overand lay down and rested. One Eye came to her; but when he touched herneck gently with his muzzle she snapped at him with such quick fiercenessthat he tumbled over backward and cut a ridiculous figure in his effortto escape her teeth. Her temper was now shorter than ever; but he hadbecome more patient than ever and more solicitous.
And then she found the thing for which she sought. It was a few miles upa small stream that in the summer time flowed into the Mackenzie, butthat then was frozen over and frozen down to its rocky bottom--a deadstream of solid white from source to mouth. The she-wolf was trottingwearily along, her mate well in advance, when she came upon theoverhanging, high clay-bank. She turned aside and trotted over to it.The wear and tear of spring storms and melting snows had underwashed thebank 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 towhere its abrupt bulk merged from the softer-lined landscape. Returningto the cave, she entered its narrow mouth. For a short three feet shewas compelled to crouch, then the walls widened and rose higher in alittle round chamber nearly six feet in diameter. The roof barelycleared her head. It was dry and cosey. She inspected it withpainstaking care, while One Eye, who had returned, stood in the entranceand patiently watched her. She dropped her head, with her nose to theground and directed toward a point near to her closely bunched feet, andaround this point she circled several times; then, with a tired sigh thatwas almost a grunt, she curled her body in, relaxed her legs, and droppeddown, her head toward the entrance. One Eye, with pointed, interestedears, laughed at her, and beyond, outlined against the white light, shecould see the brush of his tail waving good-naturedly. Her own ears,with a snuggling movement, laid their sharp points backward and downagainst the head for a moment, while her mouth opened and her tonguelolled peaceably out, and in this way she expressed that she was pleasedand satisfied.
One Eye was hungry. Though he lay down in the entrance and slept, hissleep was fitful. He kept awaking and cocking his ears at the brightworld without, where the April sun was blazing across the snow. When hedozed, upon his ears would steal the faint whispers of hidden trickles ofrunning water, and he would rouse and listen intently. The sun had comeback, and all the awakening Northland world was calling to him. Life wasstirring. The feel of spring was in the air, the feel of growing lifeunder the snow, of sap ascending in the trees, of buds bursting theshackles 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 fieldof vision. He started to get up, then looked back to his mate again, andsettled down and dozed. A shrill and minute singing stole upon hishearing. 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 alone mosquito. It was a full-grown mosquito, one that had lain frozen ina dry log all winter and that had now been thawed out by the sun. Hecould 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 sheonly snarled at him, and he walked out alone into the bright sunshine tofind the snow-surface soft under foot and the travelling difficult. Hewent up the frozen bed of the stream, where the snow, shaded by thetrees, was yet hard and crystalline. He was gone eight hours, and hecame back through the darkness hungrier than when he had started. He hadfound game, but he had not caught it. He had broken through the meltingsnow crust, and wallowed, while the snowshoe rabbits had skimmed along ontop 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 hismate, and yet they were remotely familiar. He bellied cautiously insideand was met by a warning snarl from the she-wolf. This he receivedwithout perturbation, though he obeyed it by keeping his distance; but heremained interested in the other sounds--faint, muffled sobbings andslubberings.
His mate warned him irritably away, and he curled up and slept in theentrance. When morning came and a dim light pervaded the lair, he againsought after the source of the remotely familiar sounds. There was a newnote in his mate's warning snarl. It was a jealous note, and he was verycareful in keeping a respectful distance. Nevertheless, he made out,sheltering between her legs against the length of her body, five strangelittle bundles of life, very feeble, very helpless, making tinywhimpering noises, with eyes that did not open to the light. He wassurprised. It was not the first time in his long and successful lifethat this thing had happened. It had happened many times, yet each timeit was as fresh a surprise as ever to him.
His mate looked at him anxiously. Every little while she emitted a lowgrowl, and at times, when it seemed to her he approached too near, thegrowl shot up in her throat to a sharp snarl. Of her own experience shehad no memory of the thing happening; but in her instinct, which was theexperience of all the mothers of wolves, there lurked a memory of fathersthat had eaten their new-born and helpless progeny. It manifested itselfas a fear strong within her, that made her prevent One Eye from moreclosely 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 thefathers of wolves. He did not question it, nor puzzle over it. It wasthere, in the fibre of his being; and it was the most natural thing inthe world that he should obey it by turning his back on his new-bornfamily 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 offamong the mountains at a right angle. Here, leading up the left fork, hecame upon a fresh track. He smelled it and found it so recent that hecrouched swiftly, and looked in the direction in which it disappeared.Then he turned deliberately and took the right fork. The footprint wasmuch larger than the one his own feet made, and he knew that in the wakeof such a trail there was little meat for him.
Half a mile up the right fork, his quick ears caught the sound of gnawingteeth. He stalked the quarry and found it to be a porcupine, standingupright against a tree and trying his teeth on the bark. One Eyeapproached carefully but hopelessly. He knew the breed, though he hadnever met it so far north before; and never in his long life hadporcupine served him for a meal. But he had long since learned thatthere was such a thing as Chance, or Opportunity, and he continued todraw near. There was never any telling what might happen, for with livethings events were somehow always happening differently.
The porcupine rolled itself into a ball, radiating long, sharp needles inall directions that defied attack. In his youth One Eye had once sniffedtoo near a similar, apparently inert ball of quills, and had the tailflick out suddenly in his face. One quill he had carried away in hismuzzle, where it had remained for weeks, a rankling flame, until itfinally 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 hewaited, keeping perfectly quiet. There was no telling. Something mighthappen. The porcupine might unroll. There might be opportunity for adeft and ripping thrust of paw into the tender, unguarded belly.
But at the end of half an hour he arose, growled wra
thfully at themotionless ball, and trotted on. He had waited too often and futilely inthe past for porcupines to unroll, to waste any more time. He continuedup the right fork. The day wore along, and nothing rewarded his hunt.
The urge of his awakened instinct of fatherhood was strong upon him. Hemust find meat. In the afternoon he blundered upon a ptarmigan. He cameout of a thicket and found himself face to face with the slow-wittedbird. 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 withhis paw, and smashed it down to earth, then pounced upon it, and caughtit in his teeth as it scuttled across the snow trying to rise in the airagain. 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, agliding shadow that cautiously prospected each new vista of the trail, hecame upon later imprints of the large tracks he had discovered in theearly morning. As the track led his way, he followed, prepared to meetthe maker of it at every turn of the stream.
He slid his head around a corner of rock, where began an unusually largebend in the stream, and his quick eyes made out something that sent himcrouching swiftly down. It was the maker of the track, a large femalelynx. She was crouching as he had crouched once that day, in front ofher the tight-rolled ball of quills. If he had been a gliding shadowbefore, he now became the ghost of such a shadow, as he crept and circledaround, and came up well to leeward of the silent, motionless pair.
He lay down in the snow, depositing the ptarmigan beside him, and witheyes peering through the needles of a low-growing spruce he watched theplay of life before him--the waiting lynx and the waiting porcupine, eachintent on life; and, such was the curiousness of the game, the way oflife for one lay in the eating of the other, and the way of life for theother lay in being not eaten. While old One Eye, the wolf crouching inthe covert, played his part, too, in the game, waiting for some strangefreak of Chance, that might help him on the meat-trail which was his wayof life.
Half an hour passed, an hour; and nothing happened. The ball of quillsmight have been a stone for all it moved; the lynx might have been frozento marble; and old One Eye might have been dead. Yet all three animalswere keyed to a tenseness of living that was almost painful, and scarcelyever would it come to them to be more alive than they were then in theirseeming petrifaction.
One Eye moved slightly and peered forth with increased eagerness.Something was happening. The porcupine had at last decided that itsenemy had gone away. Slowly, cautiously, it was unrolling its ball ofimpregnable armour. It was agitated by no tremor of anticipation.Slowly, slowly, the bristling ball straightened out and lengthened. OneEye watching, felt a sudden moistness in his mouth and a drooling ofsaliva, involuntary, excited by the living meat that was spreading itselflike a repast before him.
Not quite entirely had the porcupine unrolled when it discovered itsenemy. In that instant the lynx struck. The blow was like a flash oflight. The paw, with rigid claws curving like talons, shot under thetender belly and came back with a swift ripping movement. Had theporcupine been entirely unrolled, or had it not discovered its enemy afraction of a second before the blow was struck, the paw would haveescaped unscathed; but a side-flick of the tail sank sharp quills into itas it was withdrawn.
Everything had happened at once--the blow, the counter-blow, the squealof agony from the porcupine, the big cat's squall of sudden hurt andastonishment. One Eye half arose in his excitement, his ears up, histail straight out and quivering behind him. The lynx's bad temper gotthe best of her. She sprang savagely at the thing that had hurt her. Butthe porcupine, squealing and grunting, with disrupted anatomy tryingfeebly to roll up into its ball-protection, flicked out its tail again,and again the big cat squalled with hurt and astonishment. Then she fellto backing away and sneezing, her nose bristling with quills like amonstrous pin-cushion. She brushed her nose with her paws, trying todislodge the fiery darts, thrust it into the snow, and rubbed it againsttwigs and branches, and all the time leaping about, ahead, sidewise, upand down, in a frenzy of pain and fright.
She sneezed continually, and her stub of a tail was doing its best towardlashing about by giving quick, violent jerks. She quit her antics, andquieted down for a long minute. One Eye watched. And even he could notrepress a start and an involuntary bristling of hair along his back whenshe suddenly leaped, without warning, straight up in the air, at the sametime emitting a long and most terrible squall. Then she sprang away, upthe trail, squalling with every leap she made.
It was not until her racket had faded away in the distance and died outthat One Eye ventured forth. He walked as delicately as though all thesnow were carpeted with porcupine quills, erect and ready to pierce thesoft pads of his feet. The porcupine met his approach with a furioussquealing and a clashing of its long teeth. It had managed to roll up ina ball again, but it was not quite the old compact ball; its muscles weretoo much torn for that. It had been ripped almost in half, and was stillbleeding profusely.
One Eye scooped out mouthfuls of the blood-soaked snow, and chewed andtasted and swallowed. This served as a relish, and his hunger increasedmightily; but he was too old in the world to forget his caution. Hewaited. He lay down and waited, while the porcupine grated its teeth anduttered grunts and sobs and occasional sharp little squeals. In a littlewhile, One Eye noticed that the quills were drooping and that a greatquivering had set up. The quivering came to an end suddenly. There wasa final defiant clash of the long teeth. Then all the quills droopedquite down, and the body relaxed and moved no more.
With a nervous, shrinking paw, One Eye stretched out the porcupine to itsfull length and turned it over on its back. Nothing had happened. Itwas surely dead. He studied it intently for a moment, then took acareful grip with his teeth and started off down the stream, partlycarrying, partly dragging the porcupine, with head turned to the side soas 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, andthis he did by promptly eating the ptarmigan. Then he returned and tookup his burden.
When he dragged the result of his day's hunt into the cave, the she-wolfinspected it, turned her muzzle to him, and lightly licked him on theneck. But the next instant she was warning him away from the cubs with asnarl that was less harsh than usual and that was more apologetic thanmenacing. Her instinctive fear of the father of her progeny was toningdown. He was behaving as a wolf-father should, and manifesting no unholydesire to devour the young lives she had brought into the world.