White Fang

His desire to kill strengthened with the days, and he cherished hungry
ambitions for the squirrel that chattered so volubly and always informed
all wild creatures that the wolf-cub was approaching.  But as birds flew
in the air, squirrels could climb trees, and the cub could only try to
crawl unobserved 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
of things.  It did not occur to him that this fearlessness was founded
upon experience and knowledge.  Its effect on him was that of an
impression of power.  His mother represented power; and as he grew older
he felt this power in the sharper admonishment of her paw; while the
reproving nudge of her nose gave place to the slash of her fangs.  For
this, likewise, he respected his mother.  She compelled obedience from
him, and the older he grew the shorter grew her temper.

Famine came again, and the cub with clearer consciousness knew once more
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 the
meat-trail, and spending it vainly.  This famine was not a long one, but
it was severe while it lasted.  The cub found no more milk in his
mother's breast, nor did he get one mouthful of meat for himself.

Before, he had hunted in play, for the sheer joyousness of it; now he
hunted in deadly earnestness, and found nothing.  Yet the failure of it
accelerated his development.  He studied the habits of the squirrel with
greater carefulness, and strove with greater craft to steal upon it and
surprise it.  He studied the wood-mice and tried to dig them out of their
burrows; and he learned much about the ways of moose-birds and
woodpeckers.  And there came a day when the hawk's shadow did not drive
him crouching into the bushes.  He had grown stronger and wiser, and more
confident.  Also, he was desperate.  So he sat on his haunches,
conspicuously in an open space, and challenged the hawk down out of the
sky.  For he knew that there, floating in the blue above him, was meat,
the meat his stomach yearned after so insistently.  But the hawk refused
to come down and give battle, and the cub crawled away into a thicket and
whimpered his disappointment and hunger.

The famine broke.  The she-wolf brought home meat.  It was strange meat,
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.
His mother had satisfied her hunger elsewhere; though he did not know
that it was the rest of the lynx litter that had gone to satisfy her.  Nor
did he know the desperateness of her deed.  He knew only that the velvet-
furred kitten was 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.
Never had he heard her snarl so terribly.  Possibly in her whole life it
was the most terrible snarl she ever gave.  There was reason for it, and
none knew it better than she.  A lynx's lair is not despoiled with
impunity.  In the full glare of the afternoon light, crouching in the
entrance of the cave, the cub saw the lynx-mother.  The hair rippled up
along his back at the sight.  Here was fear, and it did not require his
instinct to tell him of it.  And if sight alone were not sufficient, the
cry of rage the intruder gave, beginning with a snarl and rushing
abruptly upward into a hoarse screech, was convincing enough in itself.

The cub felt the prod of the life that was in him, and stood up and
snarled valiantly by his mother's side.  But she thrust him ignominiously
away and behind her.  Because of the low-roofed entrance the lynx could
not leap in, and when she made a crawling rush of it the she-wolf sprang
upon her and pinned her down.  The cub saw little of the battle.  There
was a tremendous snarling and spitting and screeching.  The two animals
threshed about, the lynx ripping and tearing with her claws and using her
teeth as well, while the she-wolf used her teeth alone.

Once, the cub sprang in and sank his teeth into the hind leg of the lynx.
He clung on, growling savagely.  Though he did not know it, by the weight
of his body he clogged the action of the leg and thereby saved his mother
much damage.  A change in the battle crushed him under both their bodies
and wrenched loose his hold.  The next moment the two mothers separated,
and, before they rushed together again, the lynx lashed out at the cub
with a huge fore-paw that ripped his shoulder open to the bone and sent
him hurtling sidewise against the wall.  Then was added to the uproar the
cub's shrill yelp of pain and fright.  But the fight lasted so long that
he had time to cry himself out and to experience a second burst of
courage; and the end of the battle found him again clinging to a hind-leg
and furiously growling between his teeth.

The lynx was dead.  But the she-wolf was very weak and sick.  At first
she caressed the cub and licked his wounded shoulder; but the blood she
had lost had taken with it her strength, and for all of a day and a night
she lay by her dead foe's side, without movement, scarcely breathing.  For
a week she never left the cave, except for water, and then her movements
were slow and painful.  At the end of that time the lynx was devoured,
while the she-wolf's wounds had healed sufficiently to permit her to take
the meat-trail again.

The cub's shoulder was stiff and sore, and for some time he limped from
the terrible slash he had received.  But the world now seemed changed.  He
went about in it with greater confidence, with a feeling of prowess that
had not been his in the days before the battle with the lynx.  He had
looked upon life in a more ferocious aspect; he had fought; he had buried
his teeth in the flesh of a foe; and he had survived.  And because of all
this, he carried himself more boldly, with a touch of defiance that was
new in him.  He was no longer afraid of minor things, and much of his
timidity had vanished, though the unknown never ceased to press upon him
with its mysteries and terrors, intangible and ever-menacing.