Part 3 (1/2)

Herher He now evinced displeasure at her repeated failures, and hi upward His teeth closed upon the rabbit, and he bore it back to earth with hispruce sapling bending down above hirip, and he leaped backward to escape this strange danger, his lips drawn back fro with rage and fright And in that ht and the rabbit soared dancing in the air again

The she-as angry She sank her fangs into her htened, unaware of what constituted this new onslaught, struck back ferociously and in still greater fright, ripping down the side of the she-wolf's muzzle For him to resent such reproof was equally unexpected to her, and she sprang upon hination Then he discovered his mistake and tried to placate her But she proceeded to punish hiave over all attempts at placation, and whirled in a circle, his head away fro the punishment of her teeth

In the meantime the rabbit danced above them in the air The she-wolf sat down in the snow, and old One Eye, now ain sprang for the rabbit As he sank back with it between his teeth, he kept his eye on the sapling As before, it followed hi blow, his hair bristling, but his teeth still keeping tight hold of the rabbit But the blow did not fall The sapling rerowled at it through his clenched jahen he remained still, it remained still, and he concluded it was safer to continue reood in his mouth

It was his mate who relieved him from the quandary in which he found hi swayed and teetered threateningly above her she cal shot up, and after that gave noin the decorous and perpendicular position in which nature had intended it to grow Then, between theaht for them

There were other run-ways and alleys where rabbits were hanging in the air, and the wolf-pair prospected the and observant, learning the e destined to stand hiood stead in the days to come

CHAPTER II

--THE LAIR

For two days the she-wolf and One Eye hung about the Indian camp He orried and apprehensive, yet the camp lured his , the air was rent with the report of a rifle close at hand, and a bullet sainst a tree trunk several inches from One Eye's head, they hesitated nolope that put quick o far--a couple of days' journey The she-wolf's need to find the thing for which she searched had now beco 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 caently with his muzzle she snapped at him with such quick fierceness that he tuure in his effort to escape her teeth Her temper was now shorter than ever; but he had become more patient than ever andfor 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 fro, her h clay-bank She turned aside and trotted over to it The wear and tear of spring stor 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 bulkto the cave, she entered its narrow mouth For a short three feet she was coher 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 tirunt, 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 ainst the head for a ue 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 co to hi 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 et 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 ain, and settled down and dozed A shrill andOnce, 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 rownall 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 et up But she only snarled at hiht sunshi+ne 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 carier than when he had started He had found gah thesnow crust, and hile the snowshoe rabbits had skihtly 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 fa snarl froh he obeyed it by keeping his distance; but he remained interested in the other sounds--faint, s

His mate warned him irritably away, and he curled up and slept in the entrance When ht after the source of the remotely fa snarl It was a jealous note, and he was very careful in keeping a respectful distance Nevertheless, he th of her body, five strange little bundles of life, very feeble, very helpless,noises, with eyes that did not open to the light He was surprised It was not the first ti had happened It had happened many times, yet each time it was as fresh a surprise as ever to him

His mate looked at hirowl, and at tirowl shot up in her throat to a sharp snarl Of her own experience she had no ; 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 Itwithin her, thatthe 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 thein the world that he should obey it by turning his back on his new-born fa out and away on the meat-trail whereby he lived

Five or sixoff a 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 er than the one his own feet made, and he knew that in the wake of such a trail there was little ht 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 neverlife had porcupine served hi since learned that there was such a thing as Chance, or Opportunity, and he continued to draw near There was never any telling what s events were so 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 hisflame, until it finally worked out So he lay down, in a co 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 Soht 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, grorathfully at the motionless ball, and trotted on He had waited too often and futilely in the past for porcupines to unroll, to waste any , and nothing rewarded his hunt

The urge of his awakened instinct of fatherhood was strong upon him He an He came out of a thicket and found hi 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 sht 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 re on the back- track, started for hoan in hisvelvet-footed as was his custo shadow that cautiously prospected each new vista of the trail, he cae tracks he had discovered in the earlyAs the track led his way, he followed, prepared to meet the maker of it at every turn of the streaan an unusually large bend in the strea that sent hi swiftly down It was theas 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 becahost of such a shadow, as he crept and circled around, and came up well to leeward of the silent,the ptarh the needles of a loing spruce he watched the play of life before hi porcupine, each intent on life; and, such was the curiousness of the ga 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 gaht 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 ht have been frozen to ht have been dead Yet all three ani that was almost painful, and scarcely ever would it come to the petrifaction

One Eye erness So The porcupine had at last decided that its ene its ball of iitated by no tre ball straightened out and lengthened One Eye watching, felt a suddenof saliva, involuntary, excited by the livingitself like a repast before him

Not quite entirely had the porcupine unrolled when it discovered its enemy In that instant the lynx struck The bloas like a flash of light The paith rigid claws curving like talons, shot under the tender belly and ca movement Had the porcupine been entirely unrolled, or had it not discovered its enemy a fraction of a second before the bloas struck, the paould have escaped unscathed; but a side-flick of the tail sank sharp quills into it as it ithdrawn

Everything had happened at once--the blow, the counter-blow, the squeal of agony fro cat's squall of sudden hurt and astonishment One Eye half arose in his excite behind hiely at the thing that had hurt her But the porcupine, squealing and grunting, with disrupted anato feebly to roll up into its ball-protection, flicked out its tail again, and again the big cat squalled with hurt and astonish, her nose bristling with quills like a monstrous pin-cushi+on 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 ti 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 lashi+ng 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 sa andaway, 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 snoere carpeted with porcupine quills, erect and ready to pierce the soft pads of his feet The porcupineof its long teeth It had ain, but it was not quite the old compact ball; its muscles were too much torn for that It had been ripped al profusely

One Eye scooped out mouthfuls of the blood-soaked snow, and chewed and tasted and sed This served as a relish, and his hunger increased et 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 andpaw, 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 rip with his teeth and started off down the strea the porcupine, with head turned to the side so as to avoid stepping on the prickly , dropped the burden, and trotted back to where he had left the ptaran He did not hesitate a moment He knew clearly as to be done, and this he did by proan 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 htly licked hi him away from the cubs with a snarl that was less harsh than usual and that wasHer instinctive fear of the father of her progeny was toning down He was behaving as a wolf-father should, andlives she had brought into the world

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 hile 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, aay, and even to squabble, his little throat vibrating with a queer rasping noise (the forerunner of the growl), as he worked hi before his eyes had opened he had learned by touch, taste, and smell to know his mother--a fount of warentle, caressing tongue that soothed him when it passed over his soft little body, and that iainst her and to doze off to sleep

Most of the first ; but now he could see quite well, and he stayed awake for longer periods of ti to learn his world quite well His world was gloomy; but he did not know that, for he knew no other world It was dihted; but his eyes had never had to adjust theht His world was very small Its lie of the orld 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 ht He had discovered that it was different frohts 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, war 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 froed his body toward it in the saes it toward the sun