For two days the she-wolf and One Eye hung about the Indian camp.

　　He was worried and apprehensive, yet the camp lured his mate and shewas loath to depart. But when, one morning, the air was rent with thereport of a rifle close at hand, and a bullet smashed against a tree trunkseveral inches from One Eye's head, they hesitated no more, but went offon a long, swinging lope that put quick miles between them and thedanger.

　　They did not go far - a couple of days' journey. The she-wolf's need tofind the thing for which she searched had now become imperative. Shewas getting very heavy, and could run but slowly. Once, in the pursuit of arabbit, which she ordinarily would have caught with ease, she gave overand lay down and rested. One Eye came to her; but when he touched herneck gently with his muzzle she snapped at him with such quick fiercenessthat he tumbled over backward and cut a ridiculous figure in his effort toescape her teeth. Her temper was now shorter than ever; but he hadbecome more patient than ever and more solicitous.

　　And then she found the thing for which she sought. It was a few milesup a small stream that in the summer time flowed into the Mackenzie, butthat then was frozen over and frozen down to its rocky bottom - a deadstream of solid white from source to mouth. The she-wolf was trottingwearily along, her mate well in advance, when she came upon theoverhanging, high clay-bank. She turned aside and trotted over to it. Thewear and tear of spring storms and melting snows had underwashed thebank 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 towhere its abrupt bulk merged from the softer-lined landscape. Returning tothe cave, she entered its narrow mouth. For a short three feet she wascompelled to crouch, then the walls widened and rose higher in a littleround chamber nearly six feet in diameter. The roof barely cleared herhead. It was dry and cosey. She inspected it with painstaking care, whileOne Eye, who had returned, stood in the entrance and patiently watchedher. She dropped her head, with her nose to the ground and directedtoward a point near to her closely bunched feet, and around this point shecircled several times; then, with a tired sigh that was almost a grunt, shecurled her body in, relaxed her legs, and dropped down, her head towardthe entrance. One Eye, with pointed, interested ears, laughed at her, andbeyond, outlined against the white light, she could see the brush of his tailwaving good-naturedly. Her own ears, with a snuggling movement, laidtheir sharp points backward and down against the head for a moment,while her mouth opened and her tongue lolled peaceably out, and in thisway 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 brightworld without, where the April sun was blazing across the snow. When hedozed, upon his ears would steal the faint whispers of hidden trickles ofrunning water, and he would rouse and listen intently. The sun had comeback, and all the awakening Northland world was calling to him. Life wasstirring. The feel of spring was in the air, the feel of growing life under thesnow, of sap ascending in the trees, of buds bursting the shackles of thefrost.

　　He cast anxious glances at his mate, but she showed no desire to get up.

　　He looked outside, and half a dozen snow-birds fluttered across his fieldof vision. He started to get up, then looked back to his mate again, andsettled down and dozed. A shrill and minute singing stole upon his heating.

　　Once, and twice, he sleepily brushed his nose with his paw. Then he wokeup. There, buzzing in the air at the tip of his nose, was a lone mosquito. Itwas a full-grown mosquito, one that had lain frozen in a dry log all winterand that had now been thawed out by the sun. He could resist the call ofthe world no longer. Besides, he was hungry.

　　He crawled over to his mate and tried to persuade her to get up. Butshe only snarled at him, and he walked out alone into the bright sunshineto find the snow-surface soft under foot and the travelling difficult. Hewent 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 came backthrough the darkness hungrier than when he had started. He had foundgame, but he had not caught it. He had broken through the melting snowcrust, and wallowed, while the snowshoe rabbits had skimmed along ontop lightly 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 byhis mate, and yet they were remotely familiar. He bellied cautiously insideand was met by a warning snarl from the she-wolf. This he receivedwithout perturbation, though he obeyed it by keeping his distance; but heremained interested in the other sounds - faint, muffled sobbings andslubberings.

　　His mate warned him irritably away, and he curled up and slept in theentrance. When morning came and a dim light pervaded the lair, he againsought after the source of the remotely familiar sounds. There was a newnote in his mate's warning snarl. It was a jealous note, and he was verycareful in keeping a respectful distance. Nevertheless, he made out,sheltering between her legs against the length of her body, five strangelittle bundles of life, very feeble, very helpless, making tiny whimperingnoises, with eyes that did not open to the light. He was surprised. It wasnot the first time in his long and successful life that this thing hadhappened. It had happened many times, yet each time it was as fresh asurprise as ever to him.

　　His mate looked at him anxiously. Every little while she emitted a lowgrowl, and at times, when it seemed to her he approached too near, thegrowl shot up in her throat to a sharp snarl. Of her own experience she hadno memory of the thing happening; but in her instinct, which was theexperience of all the mothers of wolves, there lurked a memory of fathersthat had eaten their new-born and helpless progeny. It manifested itself asa fear strong within her, that made her prevent One Eye from more closelyinspecting the cubs he had fathered.

　　But there was no danger. Old One Eye was feeling the urge of animpulse, that was, in turn, an instinct that had come down to him from allthe fathers of wolves. He did not question it, nor puzzle over it. It wasthere, in the fibre of his being; and it was the most natural thing in theworld that he should obey it by turning his back on his new-born familyand by trotting out and away on the meat-trail whereby he lived.

　　Five or six miles from the lair, the stream divided, its forks going offamong the mountains at a right angle. Here, leading up the left fork, hecame upon a fresh track. He smelled it and found it so recent that hecrouched swiftly, and looked in the direction in which it disappeared. Thenhe turned deliberately and took the right fork. The footprint was muchlarger than the one his own feet made, and he knew that in the wake ofsuch a trail there was little meat for him.

　　Half a mile up the right fork, his quick ears caught the sound ofgnawing 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 Eyeapproached carefully but hopelessly. He knew the breed, though he hadnever met it so far north before; and never in his long life had porcupineserved him for a meal. But he had long since learned that there was such athing as Chance, or Opportunity, and he continued to draw near. There wasnever any telling what might happen, for with live things events weresomehow always happening differently.

　　The porcupine rolled itself into a ball, radiating long, sharp needles inall directions that defied attack. In his youth One Eye had once sniffed toonear a similar, apparently inert ball of quills, and had the tail flick outsuddenly in his face. One quill he had carried away in his muzzle, where ithad remained for weeks, a rankling flame, until it finally worked out. Sohe lay down, in a comfortable crouching position, his nose fully a footaway, and out of the line of the tail. Thus he waited, keeping perfectlyquiet. There was no telling. Something might happen. The porcupinemight unroll. There might be opportunity for a deft and ripping thrust ofpaw into the tender, unguarded belly.

　　But at the end of half an hour he arose, growled wrathfully at themotionless ball, and trotted on. He had waited too often and futilely in thepast for porcupines to unroll, to waste any more time. He continued up theright fork. The day wore along, and nothing rewarded his hunt.

　　The urge of his awakened instinct of fatherhood was strong upon him.

　　He must find meat. In the afternoon he blundered upon a ptarmigan. Hecame out of a thicket and found himself face to face with the slow-wittedbird. It was sitting on a log, not a foot beyond the end of his nose. Eachsaw the other. The bird made a startled rise, but he struck it with his paw,and smashed it down to earth, then pounced upon it, and caught it in histeeth as it scuttled across the snow trying to rise in the air again. As histeeth crunched through the tender flesh and fragile bones, he begannaturally to eat. Then he remembered, and, turning on the back- track,started for home, carrying the ptarmigan in his mouth.

　　A mile above the forks, running velvet-footed as was his custom, agliding shadow that cautiously prospected each new vista of the trail, hecame upon later imprints of the large tracks he had discovered in the earlymorning. As the track led his way, he followed, prepared to meet themaker of it at every turn of the stream.

　　He slid his head around a corner of rock, where began an unusuallylarge bend in the stream, and his quick eyes made out something that senthim crouching swiftly down. It was the maker of the track, a large femalelynx. She was crouching as he had crouched once that day, in front of herthe tight-rolled ball of quills. If he had been a gliding shadow before, henow became the ghost of such a shadow, as he crept and circled around,and came up well to leeward of the silent, motionless pair.

　　He lay down in the snow, depositing the ptarmigan beside him, andwith eyes peering through the needles of a low-growing spruce he watchedthe play of life before him - the waiting lynx and the waiting porcupine,each intent on life; and, such was the curiousness of the game, the way oflife for one lay in the eating of the other, and the way of life for the otherlay in being not eaten. While old One Eye, the wolf crouching in thecovert, played his part, too, in the game, waiting for some strange freak ofChance, that might help him on the meat-trail which was his way of life.

　　Half an hour passed, an hour; and nothing happened. The balls ofquills might have been a stone for all it moved; the lynx might have beenfrozen to marble; and old One Eye might have been dead. Yet all threeanimals were keyed to a tenseness of living that was almost painful, andscarcely ever would it come to them to be more alive than they were thenin their seeming petrifaction.

　　One Eye moved slightly and peered forth with increased eagerness.

　　Something was happening. The porcupine had at last decided that itsenemy had gone away. Slowly, cautiously, it was unrolling its ball ofimpregnable armour. It was agitated by no tremor of anticipation. Slowly,slowly, the bristling ball straightened out and lengthened. One Eyewatching, felt a sudden moistness in his mouth and a drooling of saliva,involuntary, excited by the living meat that was spreading itself like arepast before him.

　　Not quite entirely had the porcupine unrolled when it discovered itsenemy. In that instant the lynx struck. The blow was like a flash of light.

　　The paw, with rigid claws curving like talons, shot under the tender bellyand came back with a swift ripping movement. Had the porcupine beenentirely unrolled, or had it not discovered its enemy a fraction of a secondbefore the blow was struck, the paw would have escaped unscathed; but aside-flick of the tail sank sharp quills into it as it was withdrawn.

　　Everything had happened at once - the blow, the counter-blow, thesqueal of agony from the porcupine, the big cat's squall of sudden hurt andastonishment. One Eye half arose in his excitement, his ears up, his tailstraight out and quivering behind him. The lynx's bad temper got the bestof her. She sprang savagely at the thing that had hurt her. But theporcupine, squealing and grunting, with disrupted anatomy trying feeblyto roll up into its ball-protection, flicked out its tail again, and again thebig cat squalled with hurt and astonishment. Then she fell to backing awayand sneezing, her nose bristling with quills like a monstrous pin- cushion.

　　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 allthe time leaping about, ahead, sidewise, up and down, in a frenzy of painand fright.

　　She sneezed continually, and her stub of a tail was doing its besttoward lashing about by giving quick, violent jerks. She quit her antics,and quieted down for a long minute. One Eye watched. And even he couldnot repress a start and an involuntary bristling of hair along his back whenshe suddenly leaped, without warning, straight up in the air, at the sametime emitting a long and most terrible squall. Then she sprang away, upthe trail, squalling with every leap she made.

　　It was not until her racket had faded away in the distance and died outthat One Eye ventured forth. He walked as delicately as though all thesnow were carpeted with porcupine quills, erect and ready to pierce thesoft pads of his feet. The porcupine met his approach with a furioussquealing and a clashing of its long teeth. It had managed to roll up in aball again, but it was not quite the old compact ball; its muscles were toomuch torn for that. It had been ripped almost in half, and was still bleedingprofusely.

　　One Eye scooped out mouthfuls of the blood-soaked snow, andchewed and tasted and swallowed. This served as a relish, and his hungerincreased mightily; but he was too old in the world to forget his caution.

　　He waited. He lay down and waited, while the porcupine grated its teethand uttered grunts and sobs and occasional sharp little squeals. In a littlewhile, One Eye noticed that the quills were drooping and that a greatquivering had set up. The quivering came to an end suddenly. There was afinal defiant clash of the long teeth. Then all the quills drooped quite down,and the body relaxed and moved no more.

　　With a nervous, shrinking paw, One Eye stretched out the porcupine toits full length and turned it over on its back. Nothing had happened. It wassurely dead. He studied it intently for a moment, then took a careful gripwith his teeth and started off down the stream, partly carrying, partlydragging the porcupine, with head turned to the side so as to avoidstepping on the prickly mass. He recollected something, dropped theburden, and trotted back to where he had left the ptarmigan. He did nothesitate a moment. He knew clearly what was to be done, and this he didby promptly eating the ptarmigan. Then he returned and took up hisburden.

　　When he dragged the result of his day's hunt into the cave, the she-wolf inspected it, turned her muzzle to him, and lightly licked him on theneck. But the next instant she was warning him away from the cubs with asnarl that was less harsh than usual and that was more apologetic thanmenacing. Her instinctive fear of the father of her progeny was toningdown. He was behaving as a wolf- father should, and manifesting nounholy desire to devour the young lives she had brought into the world.