White Fang Page 4

  PART II

  CHAPTER I--THE BATTLE OF THE FANGS

  It was the she-wolf who had first caught the sound of men's voices andthe whining of the sled-dogs; and it was the she-wolf who was first tospring away from the cornered man in his circle of dying flame. The packhad been loath to forego the kill it had hunted down, and it lingered forseveral minutes, making sure of the sounds, and then it, too, sprang awayon the trail made by the she-wolf.

  Running at the forefront of the pack was a large grey wolf--one of itsseveral leaders. It was he who directed the pack's course on the heelsof the she-wolf. It was he who snarled warningly at the younger membersof the pack or slashed at them with his fangs when they ambitiously triedto pass him. And it was he who increased the pace when he sighted theshe-wolf, now trotting slowly across the snow.

  She dropped in alongside by him, as though it were her appointedposition, and took the pace of the pack. He did not snarl at her, norshow his teeth, when any leap of hers chanced to put her in advance ofhim. On the contrary, he seemed kindly disposed toward her--too kindlyto suit her, for he was prone to run near to her, and when he ran toonear it was she who snarled and showed her teeth. Nor was she aboveslashing his shoulder sharply on occasion. At such times he betrayed noanger. He merely sprang to the side and ran stiffly ahead for severalawkward leaps, in carriage and conduct resembling an abashed countryswain.

  This was his one trouble in the running of the pack; but she had othertroubles. On her other side ran a gaunt old wolf, grizzled and markedwith the scars of many battles. He ran always on her right side. Thefact that he had but one eye, and that the left eye, might account forthis. He, also, was addicted to crowding her, to veering toward her tillhis scarred muzzle touched her body, or shoulder, or neck. As with therunning mate on the left, she repelled these attentions with her teeth;but when both bestowed their attentions at the same time she was roughlyjostled, being compelled, with quick snaps to either side, to drive bothlovers away and at the same time to maintain her forward leap with thepack and see the way of her feet before her. At such times her runningmates flashed their teeth and growled threateningly across at each other.They might have fought, but even wooing and its rivalry waited upon themore pressing hunger-need of the pack.

  After each repulse, when the old wolf sheered abruptly away from thesharp-toothed object of his desire, he shouldered against a young three-year-old that ran on his blind right side. This young wolf had attainedhis full size; and, considering the weak and famished condition of thepack, he possessed more than the average vigour and spirit. Nevertheless,he ran with his head even with the shoulder of his one-eyed elder. Whenhe ventured to run abreast of the older wolf (which was seldom), a snarland a snap sent him back even with the shoulder again. Sometimes,however, he dropped cautiously and slowly behind and edged in between theold leader and the she-wolf. This was doubly resented, even triplyresented. When she snarled her displeasure, the old leader would whirlon the three-year-old. Sometimes she whirled with him. And sometimesthe young leader on the left whirled, too.

  At such times, confronted by three sets of savage teeth, the young wolfstopped precipitately, throwing himself back on his haunches, with fore-legs stiff, mouth menacing, and mane bristling. This confusion in thefront of the moving pack always caused confusion in the rear. The wolvesbehind collided with the young wolf and expressed their displeasure byadministering sharp nips on his hind-legs and flanks. He was laying uptrouble for himself, for lack of food and short tempers went together;but with the boundless faith of youth he persisted in repeating themanoeuvre every little while, though it never succeeded in gaininganything 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 ofthe pack was desperate. It was lean with long-standing hunger. It ranbelow its ordinary speed. At the rear limped the weak members, the veryyoung and the very old. At the front were the strongest. Yet all weremore like skeletons than full-bodied wolves. Nevertheless, with theexception of the ones that limped, the movements of the animals wereeffortless and tireless. Their stringy muscles seemed founts ofinexhaustible energy. Behind every steel-like contraction of a muscle,lay another steel-like contraction, and another, and another, apparentlywithout end.

  They ran many miles that day. They ran through the night. And the nextday found them still running. They were running over the surface of aworld frozen and dead. No life stirred. They alone moved through thevast inertness. They alone were alive, and they sought for other thingsthat were alive in order that they might devour them and continue tolive.

  They crossed low divides and ranged a dozen small streams in alower-lying country before their quest was rewarded. Then they came uponmoose. It was a big bull they first found. Here was meat and life, andit was guarded by no mysterious fires nor flying missiles of flame. Splayhoofs and palmated antlers they knew, and they flung their customarypatience and caution to the wind. It was a brief fight and fierce. Thebig bull was beset on every side. He ripped them open or split theirskulls with shrewdly driven blows of his great hoofs. He crushed themand broke them on his large horns. He stamped them into the snow underhim in the wallowing struggle. But he was foredoomed, and he went downwith the she-wolf tearing savagely at his throat, and with other teethfixed everywhere upon him, devouring him alive, before ever his laststruggles ceased or his last damage had been wrought.

  There was food in plenty. The bull weighed over eight hundredpounds--fully twenty pounds of meat per mouth for the forty-odd wolves ofthe pack. But if they could fast prodigiously, they could feedprodigiously, and soon a few scattered bones were all that remained ofthe splendid live brute that had faced the pack a few hours before.

  There was now much resting and sleeping. With full stomachs, bickeringand quarrelling began among the younger males, and this continued throughthe few days that followed before the breaking-up of the pack. Thefamine was over. The wolves were now in the country of game, and thoughthey still hunted in pack, they hunted more cautiously, cutting out heavycows 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 inhalf and went in different directions. The she-wolf, the young leader onher left, and the one-eyed elder on her right, led their half of the packdown 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 outby 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 suitorsall bore the marks of her teeth. Yet they never replied in kind, neverdefended themselves against her. They turned their shoulders to her mostsavage slashes, and with wagging tails and mincing steps strove toplacate her wrath. But if they were all mildness toward her, they wereall fierceness toward one another. The three-year-old grew too ambitiousin his fierceness. He caught the one-eyed elder on his blind side andripped his ear into ribbons. Though the grizzled old fellow could seeonly on one side, against the youth and vigour of the other he broughtinto play the wisdom of long years of experience. His lost eye and hisscarred muzzle bore evidence to the nature of his experience. He hadsurvived 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 tellingwhat the outcome would have been, for the third wolf joined the elder,and together, old leader and young leader, they attacked the ambitiousthree-year-old and proceeded to destroy him. He was beset on either sideby the merciless fangs of his erstwhile comrades. Forgotten were thedays they had hunted together, the game they had pulled down, the faminethey had suffered. That business was a thing of the past. The businessof love was at hand--ever a sterner and cruelle
r business than that offood-getting.

  And in the meanwhile, the she-wolf, the cause of it all, sat downcontentedly on her haunches and watched. She was even pleased. This washer day--and it came not often--when manes bristled, and fang smote fangor 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 hisfirst adventure upon it, yielded up his life. On either side of his bodystood his two rivals. They were gazing at the she-wolf, who sat smilingin the snow. But the elder leader was wise, very wise, in love even asin battle. The younger leader turned his head to lick a wound on hisshoulder. The curve of his neck was turned toward his rival. With hisone eye the elder saw the opportunity. He darted in low and closed withhis 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 heleaped clear.

  The young leader snarled terribly, but his snarl broke midmost into atickling cough. Bleeding and coughing, already stricken, he sprang atthe elder and fought while life faded from him, his legs going weakbeneath him, the light of day dulling on his eyes, his blows and springsfalling shorter and shorter.

  And all the while the she-wolf sat on her haunches and smiled. She wasmade glad in vague ways by the battle, for this was the love-making ofthe Wild, the sex-tragedy of the natural world that was tragedy only tothose that died. To those that survived it was not tragedy, butrealisation and achievement.

  When the young leader lay in the snow and moved no more, One Eye stalkedover to the she-wolf. His carriage was one of mingled triumph andcaution. He was plainly expectant of a rebuff, and he was just asplainly surprised when her teeth did not flash out at him in anger. Forthe first time she met him with a kindly manner. She sniffed noses withhim, and even condescended to leap about and frisk and play with him inquite puppyish fashion. And he, for all his grey years and sageexperience, behaved quite as puppyishly and even a little more foolishly.

  Forgotten already were the vanquished rivals and the love-talered-written on the snow. Forgotten, save once, when old One Eye stoppedfor a moment to lick his stiffening wounds. Then it was that his lipshalf writhed into a snarl, and the hair of his neck and shouldersinvoluntarily bristled, while he half crouched for a spring, his clawsspasmodically clutching into the snow-surface for firmer footing. But itwas all forgotten the next moment, as he sprang after the she-wolf, whowas coyly leading him a chase through the woods.

  After that they ran side by side, like good friends who have come to anunderstanding. The days passed by, and they kept together, hunting theirmeat and killing and eating it in common. After a time the she-wolfbegan to grow restless. She seemed to be searching for something thatshe could not find. The hollows under fallen trees seemed to attracther, and she spent much time nosing about among the larger snow-piledcrevices in the rocks and in the caves of overhanging banks. Old One Eyewas not interested at all, but he followed her good-naturedly in herquest, and when her investigations in particular places were unusuallyprotracted, 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 theyregained the Mackenzie River, down which they slowly went, leaving itoften to hunt game along the small streams that entered it, but alwaysreturning to it again. Sometimes they chanced upon other wolves, usuallyin pairs; but there was no friendliness of intercourse displayed oneither side, no gladness at meeting, no desire to return to thepack-formation. Several times they encountered solitary wolves. Thesewere always males, and they were pressingly insistent on joining with OneEye and his mate. This he resented, and when she stood shoulder toshoulder with him, bristling and showing her teeth, the aspiring solitaryones would back off, turn-tail, and continue on their lonely way.

  One moonlight night, running through the quiet forest, One Eye suddenlyhalted. His muzzle went up, his tail stiffened, and his nostrils dilatedas he scented the air. One foot also he held up, after the manner of adog. He was not satisfied, and he continued to smell the air, strivingto understand the message borne upon it to him. One careless sniff hadsatisfied his mate, and she trotted on to reassure him. Though hefollowed her, he was still dubious, and he could not forbear anoccasional halt in order more carefully to study the warning.

  She crept out cautiously on the edge of a large open space in the midstof the trees. For some time she stood alone. Then One Eye, creeping andcrawling, every sense on the alert, every hair radiating infinitesuspicion, joined her. They stood side by side, watching and listeningand smelling.

  To their ears came the sounds of dogs wrangling and scuffling, theguttural cries of men, the sharper voices of scolding women, and once theshrill and plaintive cry of a child. With the exception of the hugebulks of the skin-lodges, little could be seen save the flames of thefire, broken by the movements of intervening bodies, and the smoke risingslowly on the quiet air. But to their nostrils came the myriad smells ofan Indian camp, carrying a story that was largely incomprehensible to OneEye, but every detail of which the she-wolf knew.

  She was strangely stirred, and sniffed and sniffed with an increasingdelight. But old One Eye was doubtful. He betrayed his apprehension,and started tentatively to go. She turned and touched his neck with hermuzzle in a reassuring way, then regarded the camp again. A newwistfulness 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 incloser to that fire, to be squabbling with the dogs, and to be avoidingand dodging the stumbling feet of men.

  One Eye moved impatiently beside her; her unrest came back upon her, andshe knew again her pressing need to find the thing for which shesearched. She turned and trotted back into the forest, to the greatrelief of One Eye, who trotted a little to the fore until they were wellwithin the shelter of the trees.

  As they slid along, noiseless as shadows, in the moonlight, they cameupon a run-way. Both noses went down to the footprints in the snow.These footprints were very fresh. One Eye ran ahead cautiously, his mateat his heels. The broad pads of their feet were spread wide and incontact with the snow were like velvet. One Eye caught sight of a dimmovement of white in the midst of the white. His sliding gait had beendeceptively swift, but it was as nothing to the speed at which he nowran. 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 growthof 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 thefleeing shape of white. Bound by bound he gained. Now he was upon it.One leap more and his teeth would be sinking into it. But that leap wasnever made. High in the air, and straight up, soared the shape of white,now a struggling snowshoe rabbit that leaped and bounded, executing afantastic dance there above him in the air and never once returning toearth.

  One Eye sprang back with a snort of sudden fright, then shrank down tothe snow and crouched, snarling threats at this thing of fear he did notunderstand. But the she-wolf coolly thrust past him. She poised for amoment, then sprang for the dancing rabbit. She, too, soared high, butnot so high as the quarry, and her teeth clipped emptily together with ametallic snap. She made another leap, and another.

  Her mate had slowly relaxed from his crouch and was watching her. He nowevinced displeasure at her repeated failures, and himself made a mightyspring upward. His teeth closed upon the rabbit, and he bore it back toearth with him. But at the same time there was a suspicious cracklingmovement beside him, and his astonished eye saw a young spruce saplingbending down above him to strike him. His jaws let go their grip, and heleaped backward to escape this strange danger, his lips drawn back fromhis fangs, his throat snarling, every hair bristling with rage andfright. And in that moment the sapling reared its slender length uprightand the rabbit soared dancing in the air again.

  The she-wolf was angry. She sank her fangs into her mate's shoulder i
nreproof; and he, frightened, unaware of what constituted this newonslaught, struck back ferociously and in still greater fright, rippingdown the side of the she-wolf's muzzle. For him to resent such reproofwas equally unexpected to her, and she sprang upon him in snarlingindignation. Then he discovered his mistake and tried to placate her.But she proceeded to punish him roundly, until he gave over all attemptsat placation, and whirled in a circle, his head away from her, hisshoulders receiving the punishment of her teeth.

  In the meantime the rabbit danced above them in the air. The she-wolfsat down in the snow, and old One Eye, now more in fear of his mate thanof the mysterious sapling, again sprang for the rabbit. As he sank backwith it between his teeth, he kept his eye on the sapling. As before, itfollowed 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 hemoved it moved, and he growled at it through his clenched jaws; when heremained still, it remained still, and he concluded it was safer tocontinue remaining still. Yet the warm blood of the rabbit tasted goodin his mouth.

  It was his mate who relieved him from the quandary in which he foundhimself. She took the rabbit from him, and while the sapling swayed andteetered 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 hadintended it to grow. Then, between them, the she-wolf and One Eyedevoured the game which the mysterious sapling had caught for them.

  There were other run-ways and alleys where rabbits were hanging in theair, and the wolf-pair prospected them all, the she-wolf leading the way,old One Eye following and observant, learning the method of robbingsnares--a knowledge destined to stand him in good stead in the days tocome.