White Fang

venture that he foundthe young weasel whose mother he had helped eat, and he saw to it thatthe young weasel went the w

fter found him out and

bold and when to be cautious. Hefound it expedient to be cautious all the time, except for the

chatter of thesquirrel he had first met on the blasted pine. While the sight of a moose-bird almost invariably put him in

. He never forgot the hawk, and its moving shadowalways sent him crouching into the nearest thicket. He no longer sprawledand straddled, and already he was deve

the beginning. The sevenptarmigan chicks and the

o volubly and always informedall wild creatures that the wolf-cub was approaching. But as birds flew inthe air, squ

as founded uponexperience and knowledge. Its effect on him was that of an impression ofpower. His mother represented power; and as he grew older he felt thispower in the sharper admonishment of her paw;

nsciousness knew oncemore the bite of hunger. Th

ending it vainly. This famine was not a long one, but itwas severe while it lasted. The cub

-mice and tried to dig them out of theirburrows; and he learned much about the ways of moose-birds andwoodpeckers. And there came a day when the hawk's shadow did not drivehim crouching into the bushes. He had grown stronger and wiser, andmore confident. Also, he was desperate. So he sat on his haunches,conspicuou

ub, but not so large. And it was all for him. Hismother had satisfied her hunger elsewhere; though he did not know that itwas the rest of the lynx litter that had go

e was reason for it, and none knewit better than she. A lynx's lair is not despoiled with impunity. In the fullglare of the afternoon light, crouching in the entrance of the cave, the cubsaw the lynx- mother. The hair rippled up along his back at the s

ofed entrance the lynx couldnot leap in, and when she made a crawling rush of it the she-wolf sprangupon her and pinned her down. The cub saw little of the battle. There wasa tremendo

and sank his teeth into

next moment the two mothers separated,and, before they rushed together again, the lynx lashed out at the cub witha huge fore-paw that ripped his shoulder open to the bone and sent himhurtling sidewise against the wall. Then was added to the uproar the

rength, and for all of a day and a night shelay by her dead foe's side, without movement, scarcely breathing. For aweek she never left the cave, except for water, and then he

he had received. But the world now seemedchanged. He went about in it with greater confidenc

cause ofall this, he carried himself more boldly, with a touch of defiance that wasnew in him. He was no longer afraid of minor things, and mu

d began to play his part in it. And in his own dimway he learned the law of meat. There were t

ther portionkilled and ate his own kind, or was killed and eaten by his own kind. Andout of this classification arose the law. The aim of life was meat. Life itselfwas meat. Life lived on life. There were the

hawk. He had eaten the lynx kitten. The lynx-motherwould have eaten him had she not herself been killed and eaten. And so itwent. The law was being lived about him by all live things, and he himselfwas part and parcel of th

anged a multitudeof appetites, pursuing and being pursued, hunting and being hunted, eatingand being eaten, all in blindness

gle-purposed, and entertained but one thoughtor desire at a time. Besides the law of meat, there

piness. To run down meat was to experience thrills andelations. His rages and battl

hisardours and toils, while his ardours and tolls were in themselves self-remunerative. They were expressions of life, and life is always happyw