White Fang by Jack London - Part 2, Chapter 2 - The Lair

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Part two, Chapter two of White Fang, presented by Dream
Audio Books. White Fang by Jack London, Part two, Chapter
two 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 maid, and she

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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

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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
in rested. One Eye came to her, but when he
touched her neck gently with his muzzle, she snapped at

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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,

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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.

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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. She paused at the
mouth of the cave and looked the wall over carefully,
then on one side and the other. She ran along
the base of the wall to where its abrupt bulk

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merged with the softer lined landscape. Returning to the cave,
she entered its narrow mouth. For a short three feet
she was compelled to crouch. Then the walls widened and
rose higher in a little round chamber, nearly six feet
in diameter. The roof barely cleared her head. It was
dry and cozy. She inspected it with painstaking care, while

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one eye, who had returned, stood in the entrance impatiently
waited her. She dropped her head with her nose to
the ground and directed toward a point near to her
own closely bunched feet, and around this point she circled
several times. Then, with a tired sigh that was almost
a grunt, she curled her body in, relaxed her legs,

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and dropped down her head toward the entrance. One eye,
with pointed, interested ears, laughed at her, and beyond, outlined
against the white light, she could see the brush of
his tail waving good naturedly. Her own ears, with a
snuggling movement, laid their sharp points backward and down against

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the head for a moment while her mouth opened and
her tongue lulled peaceably out, And in this way she
expressed that she was pleased and satisfied. One eye was hungry.
Though he lay down in the entrance and slept, his
sleep was fitful. He kept awaking and cocking his ears
at the bright world without where the april sun was blazing.

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Across the snow. When he dozed upon his ears would
steal the faint whispers of hidden trickles of running water,
and he would rouse and listen intently. The sun had
come back, and all the awakening Northland world was calling
to him. Life was stirring. The feel of spring was
in the air, the feeling of growing life on the

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snow of sap ascending in the trees, of buds bursting
the shackles of the frost. He cast anxious glances at
his mate, but she showed no desire to get up.
He looked outside, and half a dozen snow birds fluttered
across his field of vision. He started to get up,

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then looked back to his mate again, and settled down
and dozed. A shrill and minute singing stole upon his hearing.
Once and twice he sleepily brushed his nose with his paw.
Then he woke up. There buzzing in the air at
the tip of his nose was a lone mosquito. It

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was a full grown mosquito, one that had lain frozen
in a dry log all winter, and that had now
been thaught out by the sun. He could resist the
call of the world no longer besides, he was hungry.
He crawled over to his mate and tried to persuade
her to get up, but she only snarled at him,
and he walked out alone into the bright sunshine, to

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find the snow's surfaced soft underfoot and the traveling difficult.
He went 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 back through
the darkness hungrier than when he had started. He had
found game, but he had not caught it. He had

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broken through the melting snow crust and wallowed, while the
snowshoe rabbits had skimmed along on top lightly. As Ever,
he paused at the mouth of the cave with a
sudden shock of suspicion. Faint, strange sounds came from within.
There were sounds not made by his mate, and yet
they were remotely familiar. He bellied cautiously inside and was

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met by a warning snarl from the she wolf. This
he received without perturbation, though he obeyed it by keeping
his distance. But he remained interested in the other sounds,
faint muffled sobbings and sliverings. His mate warmed him irritably away,
and he curled up and slept in the entrance. When
morning came and a dim light pervaded the lair, he

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again sought after the source of the remotely familiar sounds.
There was a new note in his mate's warning snarl.
It was a jealous note, and he was very careful
in keeping a respectful distance. Nevertheless, he made out, sheltering
between her legs against the length of her body, five
strange little bundles of life, very feeble, very helpless, making

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tiny whimpering noises with eyes that did not open to
the light. He was surprised. It was not the first
time in his long and successful life that this thing
had happened. It had happened many times, yet each time
it was as fresh as surprise as ever to him.
His mate looked at him anxiously. Every little while she

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emitted a low growl, and at times when it seemed
to her he approached too near, the growl shot up
in her throat to a sharp snarl of her own experience.
She had no memory of the thing happening, but in
her instinct, which was the experience of all the mothers
of wolves. There lurked a memory of fathers that had

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eaten their newborn in helpless progeny. It manifested itself as
a fear strong within her that made her prevent One
eye from more closely inspecting the cubs he had fathered.
But there was no danger. Old one eye was feeling
the urge of an impulse that was, in turn an
instinct that had come down to him from all the

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fathers of wolves. He did not question it, nor puzzle
over it. It was there in the fiber of his being,
and it was the most natural thing in the world
that he should obey it by turning his back on
his newborn family, and by trotting out and away on
the meat trail, whereby he lived five or six miles

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miles from the lair. The stream divided its forks, going
off among the mountains at a right angle. Here, leading
up the left fork, he came upon a fresh track.
He smelled it, and found it so recent that he
crouched swiftly and looked in the direction in which it disappeared.
Then he turned deliberately and took the wrong fork. The

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footprint was much larger than the one his own feet
made and he knew that in the wake of such
a trail there was little meat for him. Half a
mile up the right fork, his quick ears caught the
sound of gnawing teeth. He stalked the quarry and found
it to be a porcupine, standing upright against a tree
and trying his teeth on the bark. One eye approached carefully,

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but hopelessly. He knew the breed, though he had never
met it so far north before, and never in his
long life had porcupines served him for a meal. But
he had long since learned that there was such a
thing as chance or opportunity, and he continued to draw near.
There was never any telling what might happen, for with

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live things, events were somehow always happening differently. The porcupine
rolled itself into a ball, radiating long, sharp needles in
all directions that defied attack. In his youth, one eye
had once sniffed too near a similar, apparently inert ball
of quills, and had the tail flick out suddenly in

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his face. One quill he had carried away in his muzzle,
where it had remained for weeks a rankling flame until
it finally worked out. So he lay down in a
comfortable crouching position, his nose fully a foot away and
out of the line of the tail. Thus he waited,
keeping perfectly quiet. There was no telling something might happen.

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The porcupine might unroll, there might be opportunity for a
deft and ripping thrust of paw into the tender, unguarded belly.
But at the end of half an hour he arose,
growled wrathfully at the motionless ball, and trotted on. He
had waited too often and futilely in the pass for
porcupines to unroll. To waste any more time, he continued

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up the right fork. The day wore along and nothing
rewarded his hunt. The urge of his awakened instinct of
fatherhood was strong upon him. He must find meat. In
the afternoon, he blundered upon a ptarmigan. He came out
of a thicket and found himself face to face with
the slow witted bird. It was sitting on a log,

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not a foot beyond the end of his nose. Each
saw 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
his teeth as it scuttled across the snow, trying to
rise in the air again. As his teeth crunched through
the tender flesh and fragile bones, he began naturally to eat.

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Then he remembered, and, turning on the back track, started
for home, carrying the ptarmigan in his mouth. A mile
above the forks, running velvet footed, as was his custom,
a gliding shadow that cautiously prospected each new vista of
the trail. He came upon later imprints of the large
tracks he had discovered in the early morning. As the

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track led his way, he followed, prepared to meet the
maker of it every turn of the stream. He slid
his head around a corner of rock where began an
unusually large bend in the stream, and his quick eyes
made out something that sent him crouching swiftly down. It
was the maker of the track, a large female lynx.

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She was crouching as he had crouched once that day,
in front of her, the tight rolled ball of quills.
If he had been a gliding shadow before, he now
became the ghost of such a shadow. As he crept
and circled around and came up well to leeward of
the silent, motionless he lay down in the snow, depositing

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the ptarmigan beside him, and with eyes peering through the
needles of a low growing spruce, he watched the play
of life before him, the waiting lynx and the waiting porcupine,
each intent on life, and such was the curiousness of
the game. The way of life for one lay in
the eating of the other, and the way of life

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for the other lay in not being eaten. While all
one eye, the wolf crouching in the covert, played his
part too in the game, waiting for some strange freak
of chance that might help him on the meat trail,
which was his way of life. Half an hour past
an hour, and nothing happened. The balls of quills might

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have been a stone, for all it moved, The lynx
might have been frozen to marble and old. One eye
might have been dead. Yet all three animals were keyed
to a tenseness of living that was almost painful, and
scarcely ever would come to them to be more alive
than they were then in their seeming petrifaction. One eye

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moved slightly and peered forth with increased eagerness. Something was happening.
The porcupine had at last decided that its enemy had
gone away. Slowly, cautiously, it was unrolling its ball of
impregnable armor. It was agitated by no tremor of anticipation. Slowly, slowly,

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the bristling ball straightened out and lengthened. One eye watching
felt a sudden moistness in his mouth and a drooling
of saliva, involuntary, excited by the living meat that was
spreading itself like a repast before him. Not quite entirely
had the porcupine unrolled when it discovered its enemy. In

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that instant the lynx struck. The blow was like a
flash of light. The paw, with rigid claws curving like talons,
shot under the tender belly and came back with a swift,
ripping movement. Had the porcupine been entirely unrolled, or had
it not discovered its enemy a fraction of a second
before the blow was struck, the pall would have escaped unscathed.

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But a side flick of the tail sank sharp quills
into it as it was withdrawn. Everything had happened at once,
the blow, the counter blow, the squeal of agony from
the porcupine, the big cat's squall of sudden hurt and astonishment.
One eye half arose in his excitement, his ears up,
his tail straight out and quivering behind him. The lynx's

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bad temper got the best of her. She sprang savagely
at the thing that had hurt her, But the porcupine,
squealing and grunting with disrupted anatomy, trying feebly to roll
up into its ball protection, flicked out its tail again
and again. The big cat squalled with hurt and astonishment.
Then she fell to backing away and sneezing, her nose

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bristling with quills like a monstrous pink cushion. She brushed
her nose with her paws, trying to dislodge the fiery darts,
thrust it into the snow, and rubbed it against twigs
and branches, and all the time leaping about a head
sideways up and down in a frenzy of pain and fright.
She sneezed continually, and her stub of a tail was

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doing its best toward lashing about by giving quick, violent jerks.
She quit her antics and quieted down for a long minute.
One eye watched, and even he could not repress a
start and an involuntary bristling of hair along his back
when she suddenly leaped, without warning, straight up in the air,

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at the same time emitting a long and most terrible squall.
Then she sprang away up the trail, squalling with every
leap she made. It was not until her racket had
faded away in the distance and died out that one
eye ventured forth. He walked as delicately as though all
the snow were carpeted with porcupine quills, erect and ready

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to pierce the soft pads of his feet. The porcupine
met his approach with a furious squealing and a clashing
of its long teeth. It had managed to roll up
in a ball again, but it was not quite the
old compact ball. Its muscles were too much torn for that.
It had been ripped almost in half and was still
bleeding profusely. One eye scooped out mouthfuls of the blood

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soaked snow and chewed and tasted and swallowed. This served
as a relish, and his hunger increased mightily. But he
was too old in the world to forget his caution.
He waited He lay down and waited while the porcupine
grated its teeth and uttered grunts and sobs and occasional

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sharp little squeals. In a little while, one eye noticed
that the quills were drooping, and that a great quivering
had set up. The quivering came to an end. Suddenly
there was a final, defiant clash of the long teeth.
Then all the quills drooped quite down, and the body
relaxed and moved no more. With a nervous, shrinking paw,

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one eye stretched out the porcupine to its full length
and turned it over on its back. Nothing had happened.
It was surely dead. He studied it intently for a moment,
then took a careful grip with his teeth and started
off down the stream, partly carrying, partly dragging the porcupine,

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with head turned to the side so as to avoid
stepping on the prickly mass. He recollected something, dropped the burden,
and trotted back to where he had left the ptarmigan.
He did not hesitate a moment. He knew clearly what
was to be done, and this he did by promptly
eating the ptarmigan. Then he returned and took up his burden.

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When he dragged the result of his day's hunt into
the cave, the she wolf inspected it, turned her muzzle
to him and lightly licked him on the neck. But
the next instant she was warning him away from the
cubs with a snarl that was less harsh than usual,
and that was more apologetic than menacing. Her instinctive fear
of the father of her progeny was toning down. He

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was behaving as a wolf father should, and manifesting no
unholy desire to devour the young lives she had brought
into the world. End of chapter two