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 himself, physically, with but a single

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, awkward way, and even

to squabble, his little throat vibrating with a queer rasping noise (the

forerunner of the growl), as he worked himself into a passion. And long

before his eyes had opened he had learned by touch, taste, and smell to

know his mother - a fount of warmth and liquid food and tenderness. She

possessed a gentle, caressing tongue that soothed him when it passed over

his soft little body, and that impelled him to snuggle close against her and

to doze off to sleep.

Most of the first month of his life had been passed thus in sleeping; but

now he could see quite well, and he stayed awake for longer periods of

time, and he was coming to learn his world quite well. His world was

gloomy; 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 he

had no knowledge of the wide world 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 mouth of the cave and the source of light. He

had discovered that it was different from the other walls long before he

had any thoughts of his own, any conscious volitions. It had been an

irresistibleattraction 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, warm-coloured and

strangely pleasing. 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 from his

own personal life, had yearned toward this light and urged his body

toward it in the same way that the cunning chemistry of a plant urges it

toward the sun.

Always, in the beginning, before his conscious life dawned, he had

crawled toward the mouth of the cave. And in this his brothers and sisters

were one with him. Never, in that period, did any of them crawl toward the

dark 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 a

necessity of being; and their little puppet-bodies crawled blindly and

chemically, like the tendrils of a vine. Later on, when each developed

individuality and became personally conscious of impulsions and desires,

the attraction of the light increased. They were always crawling and

sprawling toward it, and being driven back from it by their mother.

It was in this way that the grey cub learned other attributes of his

mother than the soft, soothing, tongue. In his insistent crawling toward the

light, he discovered in her a nose that with a sharp nudge administered

rebuke, and later, a paw, that crushed him down and rolled him over and

over with swift, calculating stroke. Thus he learned hurt; and on top of it

he 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 were

conscious actions, and were the results of his first generalisations upon the

world. Before that he had recoiled automatically from hurt, as he had

crawled automatically toward the light. After that he recoiled from hurt

because he KNEW that it was hurt.

He was a fierce little cub. So were his brothers and sisters. It was to be

expected. 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 transformed

directly from meat, and now, at a month old, when his eyes had been open

for but a week, he was beginning himself to eat meat - meat half-digested

by the she-wolf and disgorged for the five growing cubs that already made

too great demand upon her breast.

But he was, further, the fiercest of the litter. He could make a louder

rasping growl than any of them. His tiny rages were much more terrible

than theirs. It was he that first learned the trick of rolling a fellow-cub over

with a cunning paw-stroke. And it was he that first gripped another cub by

the ear and pulled and tugged and growled through jaws tight-clenched.

And certainly it was he that caused the mother the most trouble in keeping

her 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's

entrance, and as perpetually being driven back. Only he did not know it

for an entrance. He did not know anything about entrances - passages

whereby one goes from one place to another place. He did not know any

other place, much less of a way to get there. So to him the entrance of the

cave was a wall - a wall of light. As the sun was to the outside dweller, this

wall was to him the sun of his world. It attracted him as a candle attracts a

moth. He was always striving to attain it. The life that was so swiftly

expanding within him, urged him continually toward the wall of light. The

life that was within him knew that it was the one way out, the way he was

predestined to tread. But he himself did not know anything about it. He

did not know there was any outside at all.

There was one strange thing about this wall of light. His father (he had

already 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 of

meat) - his father had a way of walking right into the white far wall and

disappearing. The grey cub could not understand this. Though never

permitted by his mother to approach that wall, he had approached the

other walls, and encountered hard obstruction on the end of his tender

nose. This hurt. And after several such adventures, he left the walls alone.

Without thinking about it, he accepted this disappearing into the wall as a

peculiarity of his father, as milk and half- digested meat were peculiarities

of his mother.

In fact, the grey cub was not given to thinking - at least, to the kind of

thinking customary of men. His brain worked in dim ways. Yet his

conclusions were as sharp and distinct as those achieved by men. He had a

method of accepting things, without questioning the why and wherefore.

In reality, this was the act of classification. He was never disturbed over

why 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 accepted

that he would not disappear into walls. In the same way he accepted that

his father could disappear into walls. But he was not in the least disturbed

by desire to find out the reason for the difference between his father and

himself. Logic and physics were no part of his mental make-up.

Like most creatures of the Wild, he early experiencedfamine. There

came a time when not only did the meat-supply cease, but the milk no

longer came from his mother's breast. At first, the cubs whimpered and

cried, but for the most part they slept. It was not long before they were

reduced to a coma of hunger. There were no more spats and squabbles, no

more tiny rages nor attempts at growling; while the adventures toward the

far white wall ceased altogether. The cubs slept, while the life that was in

them flickered and died down.

One Eye was desperate. He ranged far and wide, and slept but little in

the 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 birth

of the cubs, One Eye had journeyed several times back to the Indian camp

and robbed the rabbit snares; but, with the melting of the snow and the

opening of the streams, the Indian camp had moved away, and that source

of supply was closed to him.

When the grey cub came back to life and again took interest in the far

white 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 lifted

her head nor moved about. His little body rounded out with the meat he

now ate; but the food had come too late for her. She slept continuously, a

tiny skeleton flung round with skin in which the flame flickered lower and

lower and at last went out.

Then there came a time when the grey cub no longer saw his father

appearing and disappearing in the wall nor lying down asleep in the

entrance. 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 way

by which she could tell what she had seen to the grey cub. Hunting herself

for meat, up the left fork of the stream where lived the lynx, she had

followed a day-old trail of One Eye. And she had found him, or what

remained of him, at the end of the trail. There were many signs of the

battle that had been fought, and of the lynx's withdrawal to her lair after

having won the victory. Before she went away, the she-wolf had found this

lair, but the signs told her that the lynx was inside, and she had not dared

to venture in.

After that, the she-wolf in her hunting avoided the left fork. For she

knew that in the lynx's lair was a litter of kittens, and she knew the lynx

for a fierce, bad-tempered creature and a terrible fighter. It was all very

well for half a dozen wolves to drive a lynx, spitting and bristling, up a

tree; 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 at

her back.

But the Wild is the Wild, and motherhood is motherhood, at all times

fiercely protective whether in the Wild or out of it; and the time was to

come when the she-wolf, for her grey cub's sake, would venture the left

fork, and the lair in the rocks, and the lynx's wrath.
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