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 heels ofthe she-wolf. It was he who snarled warningly at the younger members ofthe pack or slashed at them with his fangs when they ambitiously tried topass him. And it was he who increased the pace when he sighted the she-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, nor showhis teeth, when any leap of hers chanced to put her in advance of him. Onthe contrary, he seemed kindly disposed toward her - too kindly to suit her,for he was prone to run near to her, and when he ran too near it was shewho snarled and showed her teeth. Nor was she above slashing hisshoulder sharply on occasion. At such times he betrayed no anger. Hemerely sprang to the side and ran stiffly ahead for several awkward leaps,in carriage and conduct resembling an abashed country swain.

　　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 marked withthe scars of many battles. He ran always on her right side. The fact that hehad but one eye, and that the left eye, might account for this. He, also, wasaddicted to crowding her, to veering toward her till his scarred muzzletouched her body, or shoulder, or neck. As with the running mate on theleft, she repelled these attentions with her teeth; but when both bestowedtheir attentions at the same time she was roughly jostled, being compelled,with quick snaps to either side, to drive both lovers away and at the sametime to maintain her forward leap with the pack and see the way of herfeet before her. At such times her running mates flashed their teeth andgrowled threateningly across at each other. They might have fought, buteven wooing and its rivalry waited upon the more 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 attained hisfull size; and, considering the weak and famished condition of the pack, hepossessed more than the average vigour and spirit. Nevertheless, he ranwith his head even with the shoulder of his one-eyed elder. When heventured to run abreast of the older wolf (which was seldom), a snarl and asnap sent him back even with the shoulder again. Sometimes, however, hedropped cautiously and slowly behind and edged in between the old leaderand the she-wolf. This was doubly resented, even triply resented. Whenshe snarled her displeasure, the old leader would whirl on the three-year-old. Sometimes she whirled with him. And sometimes the young leader onthe 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 the frontof 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; butwith the boundless faith of youth he persisted in repeating the manoeuvreevery little while, though it never succeeded in gaining anything for himbut discomfiture.

　　Had there been food, love-making and fighting would have gone onapace, and the pack-formation would have been broken up. But thesituation of the pack was desperate. It was lean with long- standing hunger.

　　It ran below its ordinary speed. At the rear limped the weak members, thevery young 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 wereeftortless and tireless. Their stringy muscles seemed founts ofinexhaustible energy. Behind every steel-like contraction of a muscle, layanother steel-like contraction, and another, and another, apparently without end.

　　They ran many miles that day. They ran through the night. And thenext day found them still running. They were running over the surface of aworld frozen and dead. No life stirred. They alone moved through the vastinertness. They alone were alive, and they sought for other things thatwere alive in order that they might devour them and continue to live.

　　They crossed low divides and ranged a dozen small streams in a lower-lying country before their quest was rewarded. Then they came uponmoose. It was a big bull they first found. Here was meat and life, and itwas 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. The bigbull was beset on every side. He ripped them open or split their skulls withshrewdly driven blows of his great hoofs. He crushed them and brokethem on his large horns. He stamped them into the snow under him in thewallowing struggle. But he was foredoomed, and he went down with theshe-wolf tearing savagely at his throat, and with other teeth fixedeverywhere upon him, devouring him alive, before ever his last strugglesceased or his last damage had been wrought.

　　There was food in plenty. The bull weighed over eight hundred pounds- fully twenty pounds of meat per mouth for the forty-odd wolves of thepack. But if they could fast prodigiously, they could feed prodigiously, andsoon a few scattered bones were all that remained of the splendid livebrute that had faced the pack a few hours before.

　　There was now much resting and sleeping. With full stomachs,bickering and quarrelling began among the younger males, and thiscontinued through the few days that followed before the breaking-up ofthe pack. The famine was over. The wolves were now in the country ofgame, and though they still hunted in pack, they hunted more cautiously,cutting out heavy cows or crippled old bulls from the small moose-herdsthey 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 out bythe 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 threesuitors all 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 to placateher wrath. But if they were all mildness toward her, they were allfierceness toward one another. The three-year-old grew too ambitious inhis fierceness. He caught the one-eyed elder on his blind side and rippedhis ear into ribbons. Though the grizzled old fellow could see only on oneside, against the youth and vigour of the other he brought into play thewisdom of long years of experience. His lost eye and his scarred muzzlebore evidence to the nature of his experience. He had survived too manybattles 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, andtogether, old leader and young leader, they attacked the ambitious three-year-old and proceeded to destroy him. He was beset on either side by themerciless fangs of his erstwhile comrades. Forgotten were the days theyhad hunted together, the game they had pulled down, the famine they hadsuffered. That business was a thing of the past. The business of love was athand - ever a sterner and crueller business than that of food-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 body stoodhis two rivals. They were gazing at the she- wolf, who sat smiling in thesnow. But the elder leader was wise, very wise, in love even as in battle.

　　The younger leader turned his head to lick a wound on his shoulder. Thecurve of his neck was turned toward his rival. With his one eye the eldersaw the opportunity. He darted in low and closed with his fangs. It was along, ripping slash, and deep as well. His teeth, in passing, burst the wallof the great vein of the throat. Then he leaped clear.

　　The young leader snarled terribly, but his snarl broke midmost into atickling cough. Bleeding and coughing, already stricken, he sprang at theelder and fought while life faded from him, his legs going weak beneathhim, the light of day dulling on his eyes, his blows and springs fallingshorter and shorter.

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

　　When the young leader lay in the snow and moved no more, One Eyestalked over to the she-wolf. His carriage was one of mingled triumph andcaution. He was plainly expectant of a rebuff, and he was just as plainlysurprised when her teeth did not flash out at him in anger. For the firsttime she met him with a kindly manner. She sniffed noses with him, andeven condescended to leap about and frisk and play with him in quitepuppyish fashion. And he, for all his grey years and sage experience,behaved quite as puppyishly and even a little more foolishly.

　　Forgotten already were the vanquished rivals and the love-tale red-written on the snow. Forgotten, save once, when old One Eye stopped fora moment to lick his stiffening wounds. Then it was that his lips halfwrithed into a snarl, and the hair of his neck and shoulders involuntarilybristled, while he half crouched for a spring, his claws spasmodicallyclutching into the snow-surface for firmer footing. But it was all forgottenthe next moment, as he sprang after the she-wolf, who was coyly leadinghim 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-wolf beganto grow restless. She seemed to be searching for something that she couldnot find. The hollows under fallen trees seemed to attract her, and shespent much time nosing about among the larger snow-piled crevices in therocks and in the caves of overhanging banks. Old One Eye was notinterested at all, but he followed her good-naturedly in her quest, andwhen her investigations in particular places were unusually protracted, hewould lie down and wait until she was ready to go on.

　　They did not remain in one place, but travelled across country untilthey regained the Mackenzie River, down which they slowly went, leavingit often 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 on eitherside, no gladness at meeting, no desire to return to the pack-formation.

　　Several times they encountered solitary wolves. These were always males,and they were pressingly insistent on joining with One Eye and his mate.

　　This he resented, and when she stood shoulder to shoulder with him,bristling and showing her teeth, the aspiring solitary ones would back off,turn-tail, and continue on their lonely way.

　　One moonlight night, running through the quiet forest, One Eyesuddenly halted. His muzzle went up, his tail stiffened, and his nostrilsdilated as he scented the air. One foot also he held up, after the manner ofa dog. He was not satisfied, and he continued to smell the air, striving tounderstand the message borne upon it to him. One careless sniff hadsatisfied his mate, and she trotted on to reassure him. Though he followedher, he was still dubious, and he could not forbear an occasional halt inorder 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 infinite suspicion,joined her. They stood side by side, watching and listening and 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 huge bulks ofthe skin-lodges, little could be seen save the flames of the fire, broken bythe movements of intervening bodies, and the smoke rising slowly on thequiet air. But to their nostrils came the myriad smells of an Indian camp,carrying a story that was largely incomprehensible to One Eye, but everydetail 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, andstarted tentatively to go. She turned. and touched his neck with her muzzlein a reassuring way, then regarded the camp again. A new wistfulness wasin her face, but it was not the wistfulness of hunger. She was thrilling to adesire that urged her to go forward, to be in closer to that fire, to besquabbling with the dogs, and to be avoiding and dodging the stumblingfeet of men.

　　One Eye moved impatiently beside her; her unrest came back upon her,and she knew again her pressing need to find the thing for which shesearched. She turned and trotted back into the forest, to the great relief ofOne Eye, who trotted a little to the fore until they were well within theshelter 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 in contactwith the snow were like velvet. One Eye caught sight of a dim movementof white in the midst of the white. His sliding gait had been deceptivelyswift, but it was as nothing to the speed at which he now ran. Before himwas bounding the faint patch of white he had discovered.

　　They were running along a narrow alley flanked on either side by agrowth of young spruce. Through the trees the mouth of the alley could beseen, opening out on a moonlit glade. Old One Eye was rapidlyoverhauling the fleeing shape of white. Bound by bound he gained. Nowhe was upon it. One leap more and his teeth would be sinking into it. Butthat leap was never made. High in the air, and straight up, soared the shapeof white, now a struggling snowshoe rabbit that leaped and bounded,executing a fantastic dance there above him in the air and never oncereturning to earth.

　　One Eye sprang back with a snort of sudden fright, then shrank downto the 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, but notso 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 now evinced displeasure at her repeated failures, and himself made amighty spring upward. His teeth closed upon the rabbit, and he bore itback to earth with him. But at the same time there was a suspiciouscrackling movement beside him, and his astonished eye saw a youngspruce sapling bending down above him to strike him. His jaws let go theirgrip, and he leaped backward to escape this strange danger, his lips drawnback from his fangs, his throat snarling, every hair bristling with rage andfright. And in that moment the sapling reared its slender length upright andthe rabbit soared dancing in the air again.

　　The she-wolf was angry. She sank her fangs into her mate's shoulder inreproof; and he, frightened, unaware of what constituted this newonslaught, struck back ferociously and in still greater fright, ripping downthe side of the she-wolf's muzzle. For him to resent such reproof wasequally unexpected to her, and she sprang upon him in snarlingindignation. Then he discovered his mistake and tried to placate her. Butshe proceeded to punish him roundly, until he gave over all attempts atplacation, and whirled in a circle, his head away from her, his shouldersreceiving 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 theblow did not fall. The sapling remained bent above him. When he movedit moved, and he growled at it through his clenched jaws; when heremained still, it remained still, and he concluded it was safer to continueremaining still. Yet the warm blood of the rabbit tasted good in 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 inthe air, and the wolf-pair prospected them all, the she-wolf leading theway, old One Eye following and observant, learning the method ofrobbing snares - a knowledge destined to stand him in good stead in thedays to come.