White Fang

wolf and One Eye hung

ir was rent with thereport of a rifle close at hand, and a bullet smashed against a tree trunkseveral inches from One E

rsuit 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

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-

h of the cave and looked

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 entra

he 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 Northl

s at his mate, but she s

dof vision. He started to get up, then looked back to his mate again, ands

of his nose, was a lone mosquito. Itwas a full-grown mosquito, one that had lain frozen in a dry log all winteran

velling 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

h of the cave with a su

ellied cautiously insideand was met by a warning snarl from the she-wolf. This he receivedwithout perturbation, though he

l. 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

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 fathersth

he 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

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 a

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 learne

nly 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

ted on. He had waited too often and futilely in thepast for porcupines to unroll, to waste an

ned instinct of fatherh

e. 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 t

d each new vista of the trail, hecame upon later imprints of the large tracks he had discovered in the early

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

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

ht have beenfrozen to marble; and old One Eye might have been dead. Yet all threeanimals were keyed to a tenseness of living th

ly and peered forth wi

ble armour. It was agitated by no tremor of anticipation. Slowly,slowly, the bristling ball straightened out and lengthened. One Eyewatching, felt

when it discovered itsenemy. In that instant the

. Had the porcupine beenentirely unrolled, or had it not discovered its enemy a fraction of a secondbefore the blow was

raight 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

st it into the snow, and rubbed it against twigs and branches, and allthe tim

or 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 wa

pine 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

nd tasted and swallowed. This served as a relish, and his hungerincre

s. In a littlewhile, One Eye noticed that the quills were drooping and that a greatquivering had set up. The quivering came to an end s

ful 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 the

nstant 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 fath