To their ears came the sounds of dogs wrangling and scuffling,the guttural cries of men,the sharper voices of scolding women,and once the shrill and plaintive cry of a child.With the exception of the huge bulks of the skin-lodges,little could be seen save the flames of the fire,broken by the movements of intervening bodies,and the smoke rising slowly on the quiet air.But to their nostrils came the myriad smells of an Indian camp,carrying a story that was largely incomprehensible to One Eye,but every detail of which the she-wolf knew.
She was strangely stirred,and sniffed and sniffed with an increasing delight.But old One Eye was doubtful.He betrayed his apprehension,and started tentatively to go.She turned and touched his neck with her muzzle in a reassuring way,then regarded the camp again.A new wistfulness was in her face,but it was not the wistfulness of hunger.She was thrilling to a desire that urged her to go forward,to be in closer to that fire,to be squabbling with the dogs,and to be avoiding and dodging the stumbling feet of men.
One Eye moved impatiently beside her;her unrest came back upon her,and she knew again her pressing need to find the thing for which she searched.She turned and trotted back into the forest,to the great relief of One Eye,who trotted a little to the fore until they were well within the shelter of the trees.
As they slid along, noiseless as shadows,in the moonlight, they came upon a run-way.Both noses went down to the footprints in the snow.These footprints were very fresh.One Eye ran ahead cautiously, his mate at his heels.The broad pads of their feet were spread wide and in contact with the snow were like velvet. One Eye caught sight of a dim movement of white in the midst of the white. His sliding gait had been deceptively swift, but it was as nothing to the speed at which he now ran. Before him was bounding the faint patch of white he had discovered.
They were running along a narrow alley flanked on either side by a growth of young spruce. Through the trees the mouth of the alley could be seen, opening out on a moonlit glade. Old One Eye was rapidly overhauling the fleeing shape of white. Bound by bound he gained. Now he was upon it. One leap more and his teeth would be sinking into it. But that leap was never made. High in the air, and straight up, soared the shape of white, now a struggling snowshoe rabbit that leaped and bounded, executing a fantastic dance there above him in the air and never once returning to earth.
One Eye sprang back with a snort of sudden fright,then shrank down to the snow and crouched,snarling threats at this thing of fear he did not understand.But the she-wolf coolly thrust past him.She poised for a moment,then sprang for the dancing rabbit. She, too,soared high, but not so high as the quarry,and her teeth clipped emptily together with a metallic snap.She made another leap, and another.
Her mate had slowly relaxed from his crouch and was watching her.He now evinced displeasure at her repeated failures,and himself made a mighty spring upward.His teeth closed upon the rabbit,and he bore it back to earth with him.But at the same time there was a suspicious crackling movement beside him,and his astonished eye saw a young spruce sapling bending down above him to strike him. His jaws let go their grip, and he leaped backward to escape this strange danger, his lips drawn back from his fangs, his throat snarling, every hair bristling with rage and fright. And in that moment the sapling reared its slender length upright and the rabbit soared dancing in the air again.
The she-wolf was angry.She sank her fangs into her mate’s shoulder in reproof;and he, frightened,unaware of what constituted this new onslaught,struck back ferociously and in still greater fright,ripping down the side of the she-wolf’s muzzle.For him to resent such reproof was equally unexpected to her,and she sprang upon him in snarling indignation.Then he discovered his mistake and tried to placate her.But she proceeded to punish him roundly,until he gave over all attempts at placation,and whirled in a circle, his head away from her,his shoulders receiving the punishment of her teeth.
In the meantime the rabbit danced above them in the air.The she-wolf sat down in the snow, and old One Eye,now more in fear of his mate than of the mysterious sapling,again sprang for the rabbit.As he sank back with it between his teeth,he kept his eye on the sapling. As before,it followed him back to earth.He crouched down under the impending blow,his hair bristling,but his teeth still keeping tight hold of the rabbit.But the blow did not fall.The sapling remained bent above him.When he moved it moved,and he growled at it through his clenched jaws;when he remained still, it remained still,and he concluded it was safer to continue remaining still.Yet the warm blood of the rabbit tasted good in his mouth.
It was his mate who relieved him from the quandary in which he found himself.She took the rabbit from him,and while the sapling swayed and teetered threateningly above her she calmly gnawed off the rabbit’s head. At once the sapling shot up, and after that gave no more trouble, remaining in the decorous and perpendicular position in which nature had intended it to grow. Then, between them, the she-wolf and One Eye devoured the game which the mysterious sapling had caught for them.
There were other run-ways and alleys where rabbits were hanging in the air,and the wolf-pair prospected them all,the she-wolf leading the way,old One Eye following and observant,learning the method of robbing snares—a knowledge destined to stand him in good stead in the days to come.
CHAPTER II THE LAIR
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 she was loath to depart.But when, one morning,the air was rent with the report of a rifle close at hand,and a bullet smashed against a tree trunk several inches from One Eye’s head,they hesitated no more, but went off on a long,swinging lope that put quick miles between them and the danger.
They did not go far—a couple of days’ journey.The she-wolf’s need to find the thing for which she searched had now become imperative. She was getting very heavy, and could run but slowly. Once, in the pursuit of a rabbit, which she ordinarily would have caught with ease, she gave over and lay down and rested. One Eye came to her; but when he touched her neck gently with his muzzle she snapped at him with such quick fierceness that he tumbled over backward and cut a ridiculous figure in his effort to escape her teeth. Her temper was now shorter than ever; but he had become more patient than ever and more solicitous.
And then she found the thing for which she sought.It was a few miles up a small stream that in the summer time flowed into the Mackenzie, but that then was frozen over and frozen down to its rocky bottom—a dead stream of solid white from source to mouth. The she-wolf was trotting wearily along, her mate well in advance, when she came upon the overhanging, high clay-bank. She turned aside and trotted over to it. The wear and tear of spring storms and melting snows had underwashed the bank and in one place had made a small cave out of a narrow fissure.