The cub's development was rapid. He rested for two days, and thenventured forth from the cave again. It was on this adventure that he foundthe young weasel whose mother he had helped eat, and he saw to it thatthe young weasel went the way of its mother. But on this trip he did notget lost. When he grew tired, he found his way back to the cave and slept.
And every day thereafter found him out and ranging a wider area.
He began to get accurate measurement of his strength and hisweakness, and to know when to be bold and when to be cautious. Hefound it expedient to be cautious all the time, except for the rare moments,when, assured of his own intrepidity, he abandoned himself to petty ragesand lusts.
He was always a little demon of fury when he chanced upon a strayptarmigan. Never did he fail to respond savagely to the chatter of thesquirrel he had first met on the blasted pine. While the sight of a moose-bird almost invariably put him into the wildest of rages; for he neverforgot the peck on the nose he had received from the first of that ilk heencountered.
But there were times when even a moose-bird failed to affect him, andthose were times when he felt himself to be in danger from some otherprowling meat hunter. He never forgot the hawk, and its moving shadowalways sent him crouching into the nearest thicket. He no longer sprawledand straddled, and already he was developing the gait of his mother,slinking and furtive, apparently without exertion, yet sliding along with aswiftness that was as deceptive as it was imperceptible.
In the matter of meat, his luck had been all in the beginning. The sevenptarmigan chicks and the baby weasel represented the sum of his killings.
His desire to kill strengthened with the days, and he cherished hungryambitions for the squirrel that chattered so volubly and always informedall wild creatures that the wolf-cub was approaching. But as birds flew inthe air, squirrels could climb trees, and the cub could only try to crawlunobserved upon the squirrel when it was on the ground.
The cub entertained a great respect for his mother. She could get meat,and she never failed to bring him his share. Further, she was unafraid ofthings. It did not occur to him that this fearlessness was founded uponexperience and knowledge. Its effect on him was that of an impression ofpower. His mother represented power; and as he grew older he felt thispower in the sharper admonishment of her paw; while the reproving nudgeof her nose gave place to the slash of her fangs. For this, likewise, herespected his mother. She compelled obedience from him, and the older hegrew the shorter grew her temper.
Famine came again, and the cub with clearer consciousness knew oncemore the bite of hunger. The she-wolf ran herself thin in the quest for meat.
She rarely slept any more in the cave, spending most of her time on themeat-trail, and spending it vainly. This famine was not a long one, but itwas severe while it lasted. The cub found no more milk in his mother'sbreast, nor did he get one mouthful of meat for himself.
Before, he had hunted in play, for the sheer joyousness of it; now hehunted in deadly earnestness, and found nothing. Yet the failure of itaccelerated his development. He studied the habits of the squirrel withgreater carefulness, and strove with greater craft to steal upon it andsurprise it. He studied the wood-mice and tried to dig them out of theirburrows; and he learned much about the ways of moose-birds andwoodpeckers. And there came a day when the hawk's shadow did not drivehim crouching into the bushes. He had grown stronger and wiser, andmore confident. Also, he was desperate. So he sat on his haunches,conspicuously in an open space, and challenged the hawk down out of thesky. For he knew that there, floating in the blue above him, was meat, themeat his stomach yearned after so insistently. But the hawk refused tocome down and give battle, and the cub crawled away into a thicket andwhimpered his disappointment and hunger.
The famine broke. The she-wolf brought home meat. It was strangemeat, different from any she had ever brought before. It was a lynx kitten,partly grown, like the cub, but not so large. And it was all for him. Hismother had satisfied her hunger elsewhere; though he did not know that itwas the rest of the lynx litter that had gone to satisfy her. Nor did he knowthe desperateness of her deed. He knew only that the velvet-furred kittenwas meat, and he ate and waxed happier with every mouthful.
A full stomach conduces to inaction, and the cub lay in the cave,sleeping against his mother's side. He was aroused by her snarling. Neverhad he heard her snarl so terribly. Possibly in her whole life it was themost terrible snarl she ever gave. There was reason for it, and none knewit better than she. A lynx's lair is not despoiled with impunity. In the fullglare of the afternoon light, crouching in the entrance of the cave, the cubsaw the lynx- mother. The hair rippled up along his back at the sight. Herewas fear, and it did not require his instinct to tell him of it. And if sightalone were not sufficient, the cry of rage the intruder gave, beginning witha snarl and rushing abruptly upward into a hoarse screech, was convincingenough in itself.
The cub felt the prod of the life that was in him, and stood up andsnarled valiantly by his mother's side. But she thrust him ignom............