CHAPTER III

THE GREY CUB



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

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.



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 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.



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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