There was food in plenty.The bull weighed over eight hundred pounds -- fully twenty pounds of meat per mouth for the forty-odd wolves of the pack.But if they could fast prodigiously, they could feed prodigiously, and soon a few scattered bones were all that remained of the splendid live brute that had faced the pack a few hours before.
There was now much resting and sleeping.With full stomachs, bickering and quarreling began among the younger males, and this continued through the few days that followed before the breaking-up of the pack.The famine was over.The wolves were now in the country of game, and though they still hunted in pack, they hunted more cautiously, cutting out heavy cows or crippled old bulls from the small moose-herds they ran across.
There came a day, in this land of plenty, when the wolf-pack split in half and went in different directions.The she-wolf, the young leader on her left, and the one-eyed elder on her right, led their half of the pack down to the Mackenzie River and across into the lake country to the east.
Each day this remnant of the pack dwindled.Two by two, male and female, the wolves were deserting.Occasionally a solitary male was driven out by the sharp teeth of his rivals.In the end there remained only four:
the she-wolf, the young leader, the one-eyed one, and the ambitious three-year-old.
The she-wolf had by now developed a ferocious temper.Her three suitors all bore the marks of her teeth.Yet they never replied in kind, never defended themselves against her.They turned their shoulders to her most savage slashes, and with wagging tails and mincing steps strove to placate her wrath.But if they were all mildness toward her, they were all fierceness toward one another.The three-year-old grew too ambitious in his fierceness.
He caught the one-eyed elder on his blind side and ripped his ear into ribbons.Though the grizzled old fellow could see only on one side, against the youth and vigor of the other he brought into play the wisdom of long years of experience.His lost eye and his scarred muzzle bore evidence to the nature of his experience.He had survived too many battles to be in doubt for a moment about what to do.
The battle began fairly, but it did not end fairly.There was no telling what the outcome would have been, for the third wolf joined the elder, and together, old leader and young leader, they attacked the ambitious three-year-old and proceeded to destroy him.He was beset on either side by the merciless fangs of his erstwhile comrades.Forgotten were the days they had hunted together, the game they had pulled down, the famine they had suffered.That business was a thing of the past.The business of love was at hand -- ever a sterner and crueler business than that of food-getting.
And in the meanwhile, the she-wolf, the cause of it all, sat down contentedly on her haunches and watched.She was even pleased.This was her day, --and it came not often, -- when manes bristled, and fang smote fang or ripped and tore the yielding flesh, all for the possession of her.
And in the business of love the three-year-old, who had made this his first adventure upon it, yielded up his life.On either side of his body stood his two rivals.They were gazing at the she-wolf, who sat smiling in the snow.But the elder leader was wise, very wise, in love even as in battle.The younger leader turned his head to lick a wound on his shoulder.
The curve of his neck was turned toward his rival.With his one eye the elder saw the opportunity.He darted in low and closed with his fangs.
It was a long, ripping slash, and deep as well.His teeth, in passing, burst the wall of the great vein of the throat.Then he leaped clear.
The young leader snarled terribly, but his snarl broke midmost into a tickling cough.Bleeding and coughing, already stricken, he sprang at the elder and fought while life faded from him, his legs going weak beneath him, the light of day dulling on his eyes, his blows and springs falling shorter and shorter.
And all the while the she-wolf sat on her haunches and smiled.She was made glad in vague ways by the battle, for this was the love-making of the Wild, the sex-tragedy of the natural world that was tragedy only to those that died.To those that survived it was not tragedy, but realization and achievement.
When the young leader lay in the snow and moved no more, One Eye stalked over to the she-wolf.His carriage was one of mingled triumph and caution.
He was plainly expectant of a rebuff, and he was just as plainly surprised when her teeth did not flash out at him in anger.For the first time she met him with a kindly manner.She sniffed noses with him, and even condescended to leap about and frisk and play with him in quite puppyish fashion.And he, for all his gray years and sage experience, behaved quite as puppyishly and even a little more foolishly.
Forgotten already were the vanquished rivals and the love-tale red-written on the snow.Forgotten, save once, when old One Eye stopped for a moment to lick his stiffening wounds.Then it was that his lips half writhed into a snarl, and the hair of his neck and shoulders involuntarily bristled, while he half crouched for a spring, his claws spasmodically clutching into the snow-surface for firmer footing.But it was all forgotten the next moment, as he sprang after the she-wolf, who was coyly leading him a chase through the woods.
