₦airaland Forum

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.

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.

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 attac ked 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 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.

PART 2


CHAPTER 1: 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.

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.

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.

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 he vain 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.