CHAPTER V

THE LAW OF MEAT



The cub's development was rapid. He rested for two days, and then

ventured forth from the cave again. It was on this adventure that

he found the young weasel whose mother he had helped eat, and he

saw to it that the young weasel went the way of its mother. But on

this trip he did not get 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 his

weakness, and to know when to be bold and when to be cautious. He

found it expedient to be cautious all the time, except for the rare

moments, when, assured of his own intrepidity, he abandoned himself

to petty rages and lusts.



He was always a little demon of fury when he chanced upon a stray

ptarmigan. Never did he fail to respond savagely to the chatter of

the squirrel 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 never forgot the peck on the nose he had received

from the first of that ilk he encountered.



But there were times when even a moose-bird failed to affect him,

and those were times when he felt himself to be in danger from some

other prowling meat hunter. He never forgot the hawk, and its

moving shadow always sent him crouching into the nearest thicket.

He no longer sprawled and straddled, and already he was developing

the gait of his mother, slinking and furtive, apparently without

exertion, yet sliding along with a swiftness that was as deceptive

as it was imperceptible.



In the matter of meat, his luck had been all in the beginning. The

seven ptarmigan chicks and the baby weasel represented the sum of

his killings. His desire to kill strengthened with the days, and

he cherished hungry ambitions for the squirrel that chattered so

volubly and always informed all wild creatures that the wolf-cub

was approaching. But as birds flew in the air, squirrels could

climb trees, and the cub could only try to crawl unobserved 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 of things. It did not occur to him that this

fearlessness was founded upon experience and knowledge. Its effect

on him was that of an impression of power. His mother represented

power; and as he grew older he felt this power in the sharper

admonishment of her paw; while the reproving nudge of her nose gave

place to the slash of her fangs. For this, likewise, he respected

his mother. She compelled obedience from him, and the older he

grew the shorter grew her temper.



Famine came again, and the cub with clearer consciousness knew once

more 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 the meat-trail, and spending it vainly. This

famine was not a long one, but it was severe while it lasted. The

cub found no more milk in his mother's breast, nor did he get one

mouthful of meat for himself.



Before, he had hunted in play, for the sheer joyousness of it; now

he hunted in deadly earnestness, and found nothing. Yet the

failure of it accelerated his development. He studied the habits

of the squirrel with greater carefulness, and strove with greater

craft to steal upon it and surprise it. He studied the wood-mice

and tried to dig them out of their burrows; and he learned much

about the ways of moose-birds and woodpeckers. And there came a

day when the hawk's shadow did not drive him crouching into the

bushes. He had grown stronger and wiser, and more confident.

Also, he was desperate. So he sat on his haunches, conspicuously

in an open space, and challenged the hawk down out of the sky. For

he knew that there, floating in the blue above him, was meat, the

meat his stomach yearned after so insistently. But the hawk

refused to come down and give battle, and the cub crawled away into

a thicket and whimpered his disappointment and hunger.



The famine broke. The she-wolf brought home meat. It was strange

meat, 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. His mother had satisfied her hunger elsewhere;

though he did not know that it was the rest of the lynx litter that

had gone to satisfy her. Nor did he know the desperateness of her

deed. He knew only that the velvet-furred kitten was 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. Never had he heard her snarl so terribly. Possibly in

her whole life it was the most terrible snarl she ever gave. There

was reason for it, and none knew it better than she. A lynx's lair

is not despoiled with impunity. In the full glare of the afternoon

light, crouching in the entrance of the cave, the cub saw the lynx-

mother. The hair rippled up along his back at the sight. Here was

fear, and it did not require his instinct to tell him of it. And

if sight alone were not sufficient, the cry of rage the intruder

gave, beginning with a snarl and rushing abruptly upward into a

hoarse screech, was convincing enough in itself.



The cub felt the prod of the life that was in him, and stood up and

snarled valiantly by his mother's side. But she thrust him

ignominiously away and behind her. Because of the low-roofed

entrance the lynx could not leap in, and when she made a crawling

rush of it the she-wolf sprang upon her and pinned her down. The

cub saw little of the battle. There was a tremendous snarling and

spitting and screeching. The two animals threshed about, the lynx

ripping and tearing with her claws and using her teeth 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 weight of his body he clogged the action of the leg and

thereby saved his mother much damage. A change in the battle

crushed him under both their bodies and wrenched loose his hold.

The next moment the two mothers separated, and, before they rushed

together again, the lynx lashed out at the cub with a huge fore-paw

that ripped his shoulder open to the bone and sent him hurtling

sidewise against the wall. Then was added to the uproar the cub's

shrill yelp of pain and fright. But the fight lasted so long that

he had time to cry himself out and to experience a second burst of

courage; and the end of the battle found him again clinging to a

hind-leg and furiously growling between his teeth.



The lynx was dead. But the she-wolf was very weak and sick. At

first she caressed the cub and licked his wounded shoulder; but the

blood she had lost had taken with it her strength, and for all of a

day and a night she lay by her dead foe's side, without movement,

scarcely breathing. For a week she never left the cave, except for

water, and then her movements were 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 take the meat-trail again.



The cub's shoulder was stiff and sore, and for some time he limped

from the terrible slash he had received. But the world now seemed

changed. He went about in it with greater confidence, with a

feeling of prowess 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 had buried his teeth in the flesh of a

foe; and he had survived. And because of all this, he carried

himself more boldly, with a touch of defiance that was new in him.

He was no longer afraid of minor things, and much of his timidity

had vanished, though the unknown never ceased to press upon him

with its mysteries and terrors, intangible and ever-menacing.



He began to accompany his mother on the meat-trail, and he saw much

of the killing of meat and began to play his part in it. And in

his own dim way he learned the law of meat. There were two kinds

of life - his own kind 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 was divided. One portion was what

his own kind killed and ate. This portion was composed of the non-

killers and the small killers. The other portion killed and ate

his own kind, or was killed and eaten by his own kind. And out of

this classification arose the law. The aim of life was meat. Life

itself was meat. Life lived on life. There were the eaters and

the eaten. The law was: EAT OR BE EATEN. He did not formulate

the law in clear, set terms and moralise about it. He did not even

think the law; he merely lived the law without thinking about it at

all.



He saw the law operating around him on every side. He had eaten

the ptarmigan chicks. The hawk had eaten the ptarmigan-mother.

The hawk would also have eaten him. Later, when he had grown more

formidable, he wanted to eat the hawk. He had eaten the lynx

kitten. The lynx-mother would have eaten him had she not herself

been killed and eaten. And so it went. The law was being lived

about him by all live things, and he himself was 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 climbed

trees, or hid in the ground, or faced him and fought with him, or

turned the tables and ran after him.



Had the cub thought in man-fashion, he might have epitomised life

as a voracious appetite and the world as a place wherein ranged a

multitude of appetites, pursuing and being pursued, hunting and

being hunted, eating and 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

things with wide vision. He was single-purposed, and entertained

but one thought or desire at a time. Besides the law of meat,

there were a myriad other and lesser 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 an unending

happiness. To run down meat was to experience thrills and

elations. His rages and battles were pleasures. Terror itself,

and the mystery of the unknown, led to his living.



And there were easements and satisfactions. To have a full

stomach, to doze lazily in the sunshine - such things were

remuneration in full for his ardours and toils, while his ardours

and tolls were in themselves self-remunerative. They were

expressions of life, and life is always happy when it is expressing

itself. So the cub had no quarrel with his hostile environment.

He was very much alive, very happy, and very proud of himself.

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