The cub's development was rapid. He rested for two days, and thenventured forth from the cave again. It was on this adventure that he foundthe young weasel whose mother he had helped eat, and he saw to it thatthe young weasel went the way of its mother. But on this trip he did notget lost. When he grew tired, he found his way back to the cave and slept.
And every day thereafter found him out and ranging a wider area.
He began to get accurate measurement of his strength and hisweakness, and to know when to be bold and when to be cautious. Hefound it expedient to be cautious all the time, except for the rare moments,when, assured of his own intrepidity, he abandoned himself to petty ragesand lusts.
He was always a little demon of fury when he chanced upon a strayptarmigan. Never did he fail to respond savagely to the chatter of thesquirrel he had first met on the blasted pine. While the sight of a moose-bird almost invariably put him into the wildest of rages; for he neverforgot the peck on the nose he had received from the first of that ilk heencountered.
But there were times when even a moose-bird failed to affect him, andthose were times when he felt himself to be in danger from some otherprowling meat hunter. He never forgot the hawk, and its moving shadowalways sent him crouching into the nearest thicket. He no longer sprawledand straddled, and already he was developing the gait of his mother,slinking and furtive, apparently without exertion, yet sliding along with aswiftness that was as deceptive as it was imperceptible.
In the matter of meat, his luck had been all in the beginning. The sevenptarmigan chicks and the baby weasel represented the sum of his killings.
His desire to kill strengthened with the days, and he cherished hungryambitions for the squirrel that chattered so volubly and always informedall wild creatures that the wolf-cub was approaching. But as birds flew inthe air, squirrels could climb trees, and the cub could only try to crawlunobserved upon the squirrel when it was on the ground.
The cub entertained a great respect for his mother. She could get meat,and she never failed to bring him his share. Further, she was unafraid ofthings. It did not occur to him that this fearlessness was founded uponexperience and knowledge. Its effect on him was that of an impression ofpower. His mother represented power; and as he grew older he felt thispower in the sharper admonishment of her paw; while the reproving nudgeof her nose gave place to the slash of her fangs. For this, likewise, herespected his mother. She compelled obedience from him, and the older hegrew the shorter grew her temper.
Famine came again, and the cub with clearer consciousness knew oncemore the bite of hunger. The she-wolf ran herself thin in the quest for meat.
She rarely slept any more in the cave, spending most of her time on themeat-trail, and spending it vainly. This famine was not a long one, but itwas severe while it lasted. The cub found no more milk in his mother'sbreast, nor did he get one mouthful of meat for himself.
Before, he had hunted in play, for the sheer joyousness of it; now hehunted in deadly earnestness, and found nothing. Yet the failure of itaccelerated his development. He studied the habits of the squirrel withgreater carefulness, and strove with greater craft to steal upon it andsurprise it. He studied the wood-mice and tried to dig them out of theirburrows; and he learned much about the ways of moose-birds andwoodpeckers. And there came a day when the hawk's shadow did not drivehim crouching into the bushes. He had grown stronger and wiser, andmore confident. Also, he was desperate. So he sat on his haunches,conspicuously in an open space, and challenged the hawk down out of thesky. For he knew that there, floating in the blue above him, was meat, themeat his stomach yearned after so insistently. But the hawk refused tocome down and give battle, and the cub crawled away into a thicket andwhimpered his disappointment and hunger.
The famine broke. The she-wolf brought home meat. It was strangemeat, different from any she had ever brought before. It was a lynx kitten,partly grown, like the cub, but not so large. And it was all for him. Hismother had satisfied her hunger elsewhere; though he did not know that itwas the rest of the lynx litter that had gone to satisfy her. Nor did he knowthe desperateness of her deed. He knew only that the velvet-furred kittenwas meat, and he ate and waxed happier with every mouthful.
A full stomach conduces to inaction, and the cub lay in the cave,sleeping against his mother's side. He was aroused by her snarling. Neverhad he heard her snarl so terribly. Possibly in her whole life it was themost terrible snarl she ever gave. There was reason for it, and none knewit better than she. A lynx's lair is not despoiled with impunity. In the fullglare of the afternoon light, crouching in the entrance of the cave, the cubsaw the lynx- mother. The hair rippled up along his back at the sight. Herewas fear, and it did not require his instinct to tell him of it. And if sightalone were not sufficient, the cry of rage the intruder gave, beginning witha snarl and rushing abruptly upward into a hoarse screech, was convincingenough in itself.
The cub felt the prod of the life that was in him, and stood up andsnarled valiantly by his mother's side. But she thrust him ignominiouslyaway and behind her. Because of the low-roofed entrance the lynx couldnot leap in, and when she made a crawling rush of it the she-wolf sprangupon her and pinned her down. The cub saw little of the battle. There wasa tremendous snarling and spitting and screeching. The two animalsthreshed about, the lynx ripping and tearing with her claws and using herteeth as well, while the she-wolf used her teeth alone.
Once, the cub sprang in and sank his teeth into the hind leg of the lynx.
He clung on, growling savagely. Though he did not know it, by the weightof his body he clogged the action of the leg and thereby saved his mothermuch damage. A change in the battle crushed him under both their bodiesand wrenched loose his hold. The next moment the two mothers separated,and, before they rushed together again, the lynx lashed out at the cub witha huge fore-paw that ripped his shoulder open to the bone and sent himhurtling sidewise against the wall. Then was added to the uproar the cub'sshrill yelp of pain and fright. But the fight lasted so long that he had timeto cry himself out and to experience a second burst of courage; and the endof the battle found him again clinging to a hind-leg and furiously growlingbetween his teeth.
The lynx was dead. But the she-wolf was very weak and sick. At firstshe caressed the cub and licked his wounded shoulder; but the blood shehad lost had taken with it her strength, and for all of a day and a night shelay by her dead foe's side, without movement, scarcely breathing. For aweek she never left the cave, except for water, and then her movementswere slow and painful. At the end of that time the lynx was devoured,while the she-wolf's wounds had healed sufficiently to permit her to takethe meat-trail again.
The cub's shoulder was stiff and sore, and for some time he limpedfrom the terrible slash he had received. But the world now seemedchanged. He went about in it with greater confidence, with a feeling ofprowess that had not been his in the days before the battle with the lynx.
He had looked upon life in a more ferocious aspect; he had fought; he hadburied his teeth in the flesh of a foe; and he had survived. And because ofall this, he carried himself more boldly, with a touch of defiance that wasnew in him. He was no longer afraid of minor things, and much of histimidity had vanished, though the unknown never ceased to press uponhim with its mysteries and terrors, intangible and ever-menacing.
He began to accompany his mother on the meat-trail, and he saw muchof the killing of meat and began to play his part in it. And in his own dimway he learned the law of meat. There were two kinds of life - his ownkind and the other kind. His own kind included his mother and himself.
The other kind included all live things that moved. But the other kind wasdivided. One portion was what his own kind killed and ate. This portionwas composed of the non- killers and the small killers. The other portionkilled and ate his own kind, or was killed and eaten by his own kind. Andout of this classification arose the law. The aim of life was meat. Life itselfwas meat. Life lived on life. There were the eaters and the eaten. The lawwas: EAT OR BE EATEN. He did not formulate the law in clear, set termsand moralise about it. He did not even think the law; he merely lived thelaw without thinking about it at all.
He saw the law operating around him on every side. He had eaten theptarmigan chicks. The hawk had eaten the ptarmigan-mother. The hawkwould also have eaten him. Later, when he had grown more formidable, hewanted to eat the hawk. He had eaten the lynx kitten. The lynx-motherwould have eaten him had she not herself been killed and eaten. And so itwent. The law was being lived about him by all live things, and he himselfwas part and parcel of the law. He was a killer. His only food was meat,live meat, that ran away swiftly before him, or flew into the air, or climbedtrees, or hid in the ground, or faced him and fought with him, or turned thetables and ran after him.
Had the cub thought in man-fashion, he might have epitomised life asa voracious appetite and the world as a place wherein ranged a multitudeof appetites, pursuing and being pursued, hunting and being hunted, eatingand being eaten, all in blindness and confusion, with violence and disorder,a chaos of gluttony and slaughter, ruled over by chance, merciless,planless, endless.
But the cub did not think in man-fashion. He did not look at thingswith wide vision. He was single-purposed, and entertained but one thoughtor desire at a time. Besides the law of meat, there were a myriad other andlesser laws for him to learn and obey. The world was filled with surprise.
The stir of the life that was in him, the play of his muscles, was anunending happiness. To run down meat was to experience thrills andelations. His rages and battles were pleasures. Terror itself, and themystery of the unknown, led to his living.
And there were easements and satisfactions. To have a full stomach, todoze lazily in the sunshine - such things were remuneration in full for hisardours and toils, while his ardours and tolls were in themselves self-remunerative. They were expressions of life, and life is always happywhen it is expressing itself. So the cub had no quarrel with his hostileenvironment. He was very much alive, very happy, and very proud ofhimself.
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