He was different from his brothers and sisters. Their hair alreadybetrayed the reddish hue inherited from their mother, the she-wolf; whilehe alone, in this particular, took after his father. He was the one little greycub of the litter. He had bred true to the straight wolf-stock - in fact, hehad bred true to old One Eye himself, physically, with but a singleexception, 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 seewith steady clearness. And while his eyes were still closed, he had felt,tasted, and smelled. He knew his two brothers and his two sisters verywell. He had begun to romp with them in a feeble, awkward way, and evento squabble, his little throat vibrating with a queer rasping noise (theforerunner of the growl), as he worked himself into a passion. And longbefore his eyes had opened he had learned by touch, taste, and smell toknow his mother - a fount of warmth and liquid food and tenderness. Shepossessed a gentle, caressing tongue that soothed him when it passed overhis soft little body, and that impelled him to snuggle close against her andto doze off to sleep.
Most of the first month of his life had been passed thus in sleeping; butnow he could see quite well, and he stayed awake for longer periods oftime, and he was coming to learn his world quite well. His world wasgloomy; but he did not know that, for he knew no other world. It was dim-lighted; but his eyes had never had to adjust themselves to any other light.
His world was very small. Its limits were the walls of the lair; but as hehad no knowledge of the wide world outside, he was never oppressed bythe narrow confines of his existence.
But he had early discovered that one wall of his world was differentfrom the rest. This was the mouth of the cave and the source of light. Hehad discovered that it was different from the other walls long before hehad any thoughts of his own, any conscious volitions. It had been anirresistible attraction before ever his eyes opened and looked upon it. Thelight from it had beat upon his sealed lids, and the eyes and the opticnerves had pulsated to little, sparklike flashes, warm-coloured andstrangely pleasing. The life of his body, and of every fibre of his body, thelife that was the very substance of his body and that was apart from hisown personal life, had yearned toward this light and urged his bodytoward it in the same way that the cunning chemistry of a plant urges ittoward the sun.
Always, in the beginning, before his conscious life dawned, he hadcrawled toward the mouth of the cave. And in this his brothers and sisterswere one with him. Never, in that period, did any of them crawl toward thedark corners of the back-wall. The light drew them as if they were plants;the chemistry of the life that composed them demanded the light as anecessity of being; and their little puppet-bodies crawled blindly andchemically, like the tendrils of a vine. Later on, when each developedindividuality and became personally conscious of impulsions and desires,the attraction of the light increased. They were always crawling andsprawling toward it, and being driven back from it by their mother.
It was in this way that the grey cub learned other attributes of hismother than the soft, soothing, tongue. In his insistent crawling toward thelight, he discovered in her a nose that with a sharp nudge administeredrebuke, and later, a paw, that crushed him down and rolled him over andover with swift, calculating stroke. Thus he learned hurt; and on top of ithe learned to avoid hurt, first, by not incurring the risk of it; and second,when he had incurred the risk, by dodging and by retreating. These wereconscious actions, and were the results of his first generalisations upon theworld. Before that he had recoiled automatically from hurt, as he hadcrawled automatically toward the light. After that he recoiled from hurtbecause he KNEW that it was hurt.
He was a fierce little cub. So were his brothers and sisters. It was to beexpected. He was a carnivorous animal. He came of a breed of meat-killers and meat-eaters. His father and mother lived wholly upon meat.
The milk he had sucked with his first flickering life, was milk transformeddirectly from meat, and now, at a month old, when his eyes had been openfor but a week, he was beginning himself to eat meat - meat half-digestedby the she-wolf and disgorged for the five growing cubs that already madetoo great demand upon her breast.
But he was, further, the fiercest of the litter. He could make a louderrasping growl than any of them. His tiny rages were much more terriblethan theirs. It was he that first learned the trick of rolling a fellow-cub overwith a cunning paw-stroke. And it was he that first gripped another cub bythe ear and pulled and tugged and growled through jaws tight-clenched.
And certainly it was he that caused the mother the most trouble in keepingher litter from the mouth of the cave.
The fascination of the light for the grey cub increased from day to day.
He was perpetually departing on yard-long adventures toward the cave'sentrance, and as perpetually being driven back. Only he did not know itfor an entrance. He did not know anything about entrances - passageswhereby one goes from one place to another place. He did not know anyother place, much less of a way to get there. So to him the entrance of thecave was a wall - a wall of light. As the sun was to the outside dweller, thiswall was to him the sun of his world. It attracted him as a candle attracts amoth. He was always striving to attain it. The life that was so swiftlyexpanding within him, urged him continually toward the wall of light. Thelife that was within him knew that it was the one way out, the way he waspredestined to tread. But he himself did not know anything about it. Hedid not know there was any outside at all.
There was one strange thing about this wall of light. His father (he hadalready come to recognise his father as the one other dweller in the world,a creature like his mother, who slept near the light and was a bringer ofmeat) - his father had a way of walking right into the white far wall anddisappearing. The grey cub could not understand this. Though neverpermitted by his mother to approach that wall, he had approached theother walls, and encountered hard obstruction on the end of his tendernose. This hurt. And after several such adventures, he left the walls alone.
Without thinking about it, he accepted this disappearing into the wall as apeculiarity of his father, as milk and half- digested meat were peculiaritiesof his mother.
In fact, the grey cub was not given to thinking - at least, to the kind ofthinking customary of men. His brain worked in dim ways. Yet hisconclusions were as sharp and distinct as those achieved by men. He had amethod of accepting things, without questioning the why and wherefore.
In reality, this was the act of classification. He was never disturbed overwhy a thing happened. How it happened was sufficient for him. Thus,when he had bumped his nose on the back-wall a few times, he acceptedthat he would not disappear into walls. In the same way he accepted thathis father could disappear into walls. But he was not in the least disturbedby desire to find out the reason for the difference between his father andhimself. Logic and physics were no part of his mental make-up.
Like most creatures of the Wild, he early experienced famine. Therecame a time when not only did the meat-supply cease, but the milk nolonger came from his mother's breast. At first, the cubs whimpered andcried, but for the most part they slept. It was not long before they werereduced to a coma of hunger. There were no more spats and squabbles, nomore tiny rages nor attempts at growling; while the adventures toward thefar white wall ceased altogether. The cubs slept, while the life that was inthem flickered and died down.
One Eye was desperate. He ranged far and wide, and slept but little inthe lair that had now become cheerless and miserable. The she-wolf, too,left her litter and went out in search of meat. In the first days after the birthof the cubs, One Eye had journeyed several times back to the Indian campand robbed the rabbit snares; but, with the melting of the snow and theopening of the streams, the Indian camp had moved away, and that sourceof supply was closed to him.
When the grey cub came back to life and again took interest in the farwhite wall, he found that the population of his world had been reduced.
Only one sister remained to him. The rest were gone. As he grew stronger,he found himself compelled to play alone, for the sister no longer liftedher head nor moved about. His little body rounded out with the meat henow ate; but the food had come too late for her. She slept continuously, atiny skeleton flung round with skin in which the flame flickered lower andlower and at last went out.
Then there came a time when the grey cub no longer saw his fatherappearing and disappearing in the wall nor lying down asleep in theentrance. This had happened at the end of a second and less severe famine.
The she-wolf knew why One Eye never came back, but there was no wayby which she could tell what she had seen to the grey cub. Hunting herselffor meat, up the left fork of the stream where lived the lynx, she hadfollowed a day-old trail of One Eye. And she had found him, or whatremained of him, at the end of the trail. There were many signs of thebattle that had been fought, and of the lynx's withdrawal to her lair afterhaving won the victory. Before she went away, the she-wolf had found thislair, but the signs told her that the lynx was inside, and she had not daredto venture in.
After that, the she-wolf in her hunting avoided the left fork. For sheknew that in the lynx's lair was a litter of kittens, and she knew the lynxfor a fierce, bad-tempered creature and a terrible fighter. It was all verywell for half a dozen wolves to drive a lynx, spitting and bristling, up atree; but it was quite a different matter for a lone wolf to encounter a lynx- especially when the lynx was known to have a litter of hungry kittens ather back.
But the Wild is the Wild, and motherhood is motherhood, at all timesfiercely protective whether in the Wild or out of it; and the time was tocome when the she-wolf, for her grey cub's sake, would venture the leftfork, and the lair in the rocks, and the lynx's wrath.