CHAPTER II

THE LAIR



For two days the she-wolf and One Eye hung about the Indian camp.

He was worried and apprehensive, yet the camp lured his mate and

she was loath to depart. But when, one morning, the air was rent

with the report of a rifle close at hand, and a bullet smashed

against a tree trunk several inches from One Eye's head, they

hesitated no more, but went off on a long, 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 to find the thing for which she searched had now become

imperative. She was getting very heavy, and could run but slowly.

Once, in the pursuit of a rabbit, which she ordinarily would have

caught with ease, she gave over and lay down and rested. One Eye

came to her; but when he touched her neck gently with his muzzle

she snapped at him with such quick fierceness that he tumbled over

backward and cut a ridiculous figure in his effort to escape her

teeth. Her temper was now shorter than ever; but he had become

more patient than ever and more solicitous.



And then she found the thing for which she sought. It was a few

miles up a small stream that in the summer time flowed into the

Mackenzie, but that then was frozen over and frozen down to its

rocky bottom - a dead stream of solid white from source to mouth.

The she-wolf was trotting wearily along, her mate well in advance,

when she came upon the overhanging, high clay-bank. She turned

aside and trotted over to it. The wear and tear of spring storms

and melting snows had underwashed the bank 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 to where its abrupt bulk merged from the softer-lined

landscape. Returning to the cave, she entered its narrow mouth.

For a short three feet she was compelled to crouch, then the walls

widened and rose higher in a little round chamber nearly six feet

in diameter. The roof barely cleared her head. It was dry and

cosey. She inspected it with painstaking care, while One Eye, who

had returned, stood in the entrance and patiently watched her. She

dropped her head, with her nose to the ground and directed toward a

point near to her closely bunched feet, and around this point she

circled several times; then, with a tired sigh that was almost a

grunt, she curled her body in, relaxed her legs, and dropped down,

her head toward the entrance. One Eye, with pointed, interested

ears, laughed at her, and beyond, outlined against the white light,

she could see the brush of his tail waving good-naturedly. Her own

ears, with a snuggling movement, laid their sharp points backward

and down against the head for a moment, while her mouth opened and

her tongue lolled peaceably out, and in this way she expressed that

she was pleased and satisfied.



One Eye was hungry. Though he lay down in the entrance and slept,

his sleep was fitful. He kept awaking and cocking his ears at the

bright world without, where the April sun was blazing across the

snow. When he dozed, upon his ears would steal the faint whispers

of hidden trickles of running water, and he would rouse and listen

intently. The sun had come back, and all the awakening Northland

world was calling to him. Life was stirring. The feel of spring

was in the air, the feel of growing life under the snow, of sap

ascending in the trees, of buds bursting the shackles 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 field of vision. He started to get up, then looked back

to his mate again, and settled down and dozed. A shrill and minute

singing stole upon his heating. 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 a lone mosquito. It was a

full-grown mosquito, one that had lain frozen in a dry log all

winter and that had now been thawed out by the sun. He could

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 she only snarled at him, and he walked out alone into the

bright sunshine to find the snow-surface soft under foot and the

travelling difficult. He went up the frozen bed of the stream,

where the snow, shaded by the trees, was yet hard and crystalline.

He was gone eight hours, and he came back through the darkness

hungrier than when he had started. He had found game, but he had

not caught it. He had broken through the melting snow crust, and

wallowed, while the snowshoe rabbits had skimmed along on top

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 his mate, and yet they were remotely familiar.

He bellied cautiously inside and was met by a warning snarl from

the she-wolf. This he received without perturbation, though he

obeyed it by keeping his distance; but he remained interested in

the other sounds - faint, muffled sobbings and slubberings.



His mate warned him irritably away, and he curled up and slept in

the entrance. When morning came and a dim light pervaded the lair,

he again sought after the source of the remotely familiar sounds.

There was a new note in his mate's warning snarl. It was a jealous

note, and he was very careful in keeping a respectful distance.

Nevertheless, he made out, sheltering between her legs against the

length of her body, five strange little bundles of life, very

feeble, very helpless, making tiny whimpering noises, with eyes

that did not open to the light. He was surprised. It was not the

first time in his long and successful life that this thing had

happened. It had happened many times, yet each time it was as

fresh a surprise as ever to him.



His mate looked at him anxiously. Every little while she emitted a

low growl, and at times, when it seemed to her he approached too

near, the growl shot up in her throat to a sharp snarl. Of her own

experience she had no memory of the thing happening; but in her

instinct, which was the experience of all the mothers of wolves,

there lurked a memory of fathers that had eaten their new-born and

helpless progeny. It manifested itself as a fear strong within

her, that made her prevent One Eye from more closely 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 the fathers of wolves. He did not question it, nor puzzle

over it. It was there, in the fibre of his being; and it was the

most natural thing in the world that he should obey it by turning

his back on his new-born family 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 off among the mountains at a right angle. Here, leading up

the left fork, he came upon a fresh track. He smelled it and found

it so recent that he crouched swiftly, and looked in the direction

in which it disappeared. Then he turned deliberately and took the

right fork. The footprint was much larger than the one his own

feet made, and he knew that in the wake of such a trail there was

little meat for him.



Half a mile up the right fork, his quick ears caught the sound of

gnawing teeth. He stalked the quarry and found it to be a

porcupine, standing upright against a tree and trying his teeth on

the bark. One Eye approached carefully but hopelessly. He knew

the breed, though he had never met it so far north before; and

never in his long life had porcupine served him for a meal. But he

had long since learned that there was such a thing as Chance, or

Opportunity, and he continued to draw near. There was never any

telling what might happen, for with live things events were somehow

always happening differently.



The porcupine rolled itself into a ball, radiating long, sharp

needles in all directions that defied attack. In his youth One Eye

had once sniffed too near a similar, apparently inert ball of

quills, and had the tail flick out suddenly in his face. One quill

he had carried away in his muzzle, where it had remained for weeks,

a rankling flame, until it finally 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 he waited, keeping perfectly

quiet. There was no telling. Something might happen. The

porcupine might unroll. There might be opportunity for a deft and

ripping thrust of paw into the tender, unguarded belly.



But at the end of half an hour he arose, growled wrathfully at the

motionless ball, and trotted on. He had waited too often and

futilely in the past for porcupines to unroll, to waste any more

time. He continued up the right fork. The day wore along, and

nothing rewarded his hunt.



The urge of his awakened instinct of fatherhood was strong upon

him. He must find meat. In the afternoon he blundered upon a

ptarmigan. He came out of a thicket and found himself face to face

with the slow-witted bird. 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 with his paw, and smashed it down

to earth, then pounced upon it, and caught it in his teeth as it

scuttled across the snow trying to rise in the air again. 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, a

gliding shadow that cautiously prospected each new vista of the

trail, he came upon later imprints of the large tracks he had

discovered in the early morning. As the track led his way, he

followed, prepared to meet the maker of it at every turn of the

stream.



He slid his head around a corner of rock, where began an unusually

large bend in the stream, and his quick eyes made out something

that sent him crouching swiftly down. It was the maker of the

track, a large female lynx. She was crouching as he had crouched

once that day, in front of her the tight-rolled ball of quills. If

he had been a gliding shadow before, he now became the ghost of

such a shadow, as he crept and circled around, and came up well to

leeward of the silent, motionless pair.



He lay down in the snow, depositing the ptarmigan beside him, and

with eyes peering through the needles of a low-growing spruce he

watched the play of life before him - the waiting lynx and the

waiting porcupine, each intent on life; and, such was the

curiousness of the game, the way of life for one lay in the eating

of the other, and the way of life for the other lay in being not

eaten. While old One Eye, the wolf crouching in the covert, played

his part, too, in the game, waiting for some strange freak of

Chance, that might help him on the meat-trail which was his way of

life.



Half an hour passed, an hour; and nothing happened. The balls of

quills might have been a stone for all it moved; the lynx might

have been frozen to marble; and old One Eye might have been dead.

Yet all three animals were keyed to a tenseness of living that was

almost painful, and scarcely ever would it come to them to be more

alive than they were then in their seeming petrifaction.



One Eye moved slightly and peered forth with increased eagerness.

Something was happening. The porcupine had at last decided that

its enemy had gone away. Slowly, cautiously, it was unrolling its

ball of impregnable armour. It was agitated by no tremor of

anticipation. Slowly, slowly, the bristling ball straightened out

and lengthened. One Eye watching, felt a sudden moistness in his

mouth and a drooling of saliva, involuntary, excited by the living

meat that was spreading itself like a repast before him.



Not quite entirely had the porcupine unrolled when it discovered

its enemy. In that instant the lynx struck. The blow was like a

flash of light. The paw, with rigid claws curving like talons,

shot under the tender belly and came back with a swift ripping

movement. Had the porcupine been entirely unrolled, or had it not

discovered its enemy a fraction of a second before the blow was

struck, the paw would have escaped unscathed; but a side-flick of

the tail sank sharp quills into it as it was withdrawn.



Everything had happened at once - the blow, the counter-blow, the

squeal of agony from the porcupine, the big cat's squall of sudden

hurt and astonishment. One Eye half arose in his excitement, his

ears up, his tail straight out and quivering behind him. The

lynx's bad temper got the best of her. She sprang savagely at the

thing that had hurt her. But the porcupine, squealing and

grunting, with disrupted anatomy trying feebly to roll up into its

ball-protection, flicked out its tail again, and again the big cat

squalled with hurt and astonishment. Then she fell to backing away

and sneezing, her nose bristling with quills like a monstrous pin-

cushion. She brushed her nose with her paws, trying to dislodge

the fiery darts, thrust it into the snow, and rubbed it against

twigs and branches, and all the time leaping about, ahead,

sidewise, up and down, in a frenzy of pain and fright.



She sneezed continually, and her stub of a tail was doing its best

toward lashing about by giving quick, violent jerks. She quit her

antics, and quieted down for a long minute. One Eye watched. And

even he could not repress a start and an involuntary bristling of

hair along his back when she suddenly leaped, without warning,

straight up in the air, at the same time emitting a long and most

terrible squall. Then she sprang away, up the trail, squalling

with every leap she made.



It was not until her racket had faded away in the distance and died

out that One Eye ventured forth. He walked as delicately as though

all the snow were carpeted with porcupine quills, erect and ready

to pierce the soft pads of his feet. The porcupine met his

approach with a furious squealing and a clashing of its long teeth.

It had managed to roll up in a ball again, but it was not quite the

old compact ball; its muscles were too much torn for that. It had

been ripped almost in half, and was still bleeding profusely.



One Eye scooped out mouthfuls of the blood-soaked snow, and chewed

and tasted and swallowed. This served as a relish, and his hunger

increased mightily; but he was too old in the world to forget his

caution. He waited. He lay down and waited, while the porcupine

grated its teeth and uttered grunts and sobs and occasional sharp

little squeals. In a little while, One Eye noticed that the quills

were drooping and that a great quivering had set up. The quivering

came to an end suddenly. There was a final defiant clash of the

long teeth. Then all the quills drooped quite down, and the body

relaxed and moved no more.



With a nervous, shrinking paw, One Eye stretched out the porcupine

to its full length and turned it over on its back. Nothing had

happened. It was surely dead. He studied it intently for a

moment, then took a careful grip with his teeth and started off

down the stream, partly carrying, partly dragging the porcupine,

with head turned to the side so as 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, and this he did by

promptly eating the ptarmigan. Then he returned and took up his

burden.



When he dragged the result of his day's hunt into the cave, the

she-wolf inspected it, turned her muzzle to him, and lightly licked

him on the neck. But the next instant she was warning him away

from the cubs with a snarl that was less harsh than usual and that

was more apologetic than menacing. Her instinctive fear of the

father of her progeny was toning down. He was behaving as a wolf-

father should, and manifesting no unholy desire to devour the young

lives she had brought into the world.

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