White Fang

by Jack London

  CHAPTER V--THE LAW OF MEAT

  The cub's development was rapid. He rested for two days, and thenventured forth from the cave again. It was on this adventure that hefound the young weasel whose mother he had helped eat, and he saw to itthat the young weasel went the way of its mother. But on this trip hedid not get lost. When he grew tired, he found his way back to the caveand slept. And every day thereafter found him out and ranging a widerarea.

  He began to get accurate measurement of his strength and his weakness,and to know when to be bold and when to be cautious. He found itexpedient to be cautious all the time, except for the rare moments, when,assured of his own intrepidity, he abandoned himself to petty rages andlusts.

  He was always a little demon of fury when he chanced upon a strayptarmigan. Never did he fail to respond savagely to the chatter of thesquirrel he had first met on the blasted pine. While the sight of amoose-bird almost invariably put him into the wildest of rages; for henever forgot the peck on the nose he had received from the first of thatilk he encountered.

  But there were times when even a moose-bird failed to affect him, andthose were times when he felt himself to be in danger from some otherprowling meat hunter. He never forgot the hawk, and its moving shadowalways sent him crouching into the nearest thicket. He no longersprawled and straddled, and already he was developing the gait of hismother, slinking and furtive, apparently without exertion, yet slidingalong with a swiftness that was as deceptive as it was imperceptible.

  In the matter of meat, his luck had been all in the beginning. The sevenptarmigan chicks and the baby weasel represented the sum of his killings.His desire to kill strengthened with the days, and he cherished hungryambitions for the squirrel that chattered so volubly and always informedall wild creatures that the wolf-cub was approaching. But as birds flewin the air, squirrels could climb trees, and the cub could only try tocrawl 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 unafraidof things. It did not occur to him that this fearlessness was foundedupon experience and knowledge. Its effect on him was that of animpression of power. His mother represented power; and as he grew olderhe felt this power in the sharper admonishment of her paw; while thereproving nudge of her nose gave place to the slash of her fangs. Forthis, likewise, he respected his mother. She compelled obedience fromhim, and the older he grew the shorter grew her temper.

  Famine came again, and the cub with clearer consciousness knew once morethe 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 themeat-trail, and spending it vainly. This famine was not a long one, butit was severe while it lasted. The cub found no more milk in hismother'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 hehunted in deadly earnestness, and found nothing. Yet the failure of itaccelerated his development. He studied the habits of the squirrel withgreater carefulness, and strove with greater craft to steal upon it andsurprise it. He studied the wood-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, and moreconfident. Also, he was desperate. So he sat on his haunches,conspicuously in an open space, and challenged the hawk down out of thesky. For he knew that there, floating in the blue above him, was meat,the meat his stomach yearned after so insistently. But the hawk refusedto come down and give battle, and the cub crawled away into a thicket andwhimpered 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 knowthat it was the rest of the lynx litter that had gone to satisfy her. Nordid 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 itwas the most terrible snarl she ever gave. There was reason for it, andnone knew it better than she. A lynx's lair is not despoiled withimpunity. In the full glare of the afternoon light, crouching in theentrance of the cave, the cub saw the lynx-mother. The hair rippled upalong his back at the sight. Here was fear, and it did not require hisinstinct to tell him of it. And if sight alone were not sufficient, thecry of rage the intruder gave, beginning with a snarl and rushingabruptly 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 andsnarled valiantly by his mother's side. But she thrust him ignominiouslyaway and behind her. Because of the low-roofed 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. Therewas a tremendous snarling and spitting and screeching. The two animalsthreshed about, the lynx ripping and tearing with her claws and using herteeth 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 weightof his body he clogged the action of the leg and thereby saved his mothermuch damage. A change in the battle crushed him under both their bodiesand wrenched loose his hold. The next moment the two mothers separated,and, before they rushed together again, the lynx lashed out at the cubwith a huge fore-paw that ripped his shoulder open to the bone and senthim hurtling sidewise against the wall. Then was added to the uproar thecub's shrill yelp of pain and fright. But the fight lasted so long thathe had time to cry himself out and to experience a second burst ofcourage; and the end of the battle found him again clinging to a hind-legand furiously growling between his teeth.

  The lynx was dead. But the she-wolf was very weak and sick. At firstshe caressed the cub and licked his wounded shoulder; but the blood shehad lost had taken with it her strength, and for all of a day and a nightshe lay by her dead foe's side, without movement, scarcely breathing. Fora week she never left the cave, except for water, and then her movementswere 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 takethe meat-trail again.

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

  He began to accompany his mother on the meat-trail, and he saw much ofthe killing of meat and began to play his part in it. And in his own dimway he learned the law of meat. There were two kinds of life--his ownkind and the other kind. His own kind included his mother and himself.The other kind included all live things that moved. But the other kindwas divided. One portion was what his own kind killed and ate. Thisportion was composed of the non-killers and the small killers. The otherportion killed and ate his own kind, or was killed and eaten by his ownkind. And out of this classification arose the law. The aim of life wasmeat. Life itself was meat. Life lived on life. There were the eatersand the eaten. The law was: EAT OR BE E
ATEN. He did not formulate thelaw in clear, set terms and moralise about it. He did not even think thelaw; he merely lived the law without thinking about it at all.

  He saw the law operating around him on every side. He had eaten theptarmigan chicks. The hawk had eaten the ptarmigan-mother. The hawkwould also have eaten him. Later, when he had grown more formidable, hewanted to eat the hawk. He had eaten the lynx kitten. The lynx-motherwould have eaten him had she not herself been killed and eaten. And soit went. The law was being lived about him by all live things, and hehimself was part and parcel of the law. He was a killer. His only foodwas meat, live meat, that ran away swiftly before him, or flew into theair, or climbed trees, or hid in the ground, or faced him and fought withhim, or turned the tables and ran after him.

  Had the cub thought in man-fashion, he might have epitomised life as avoracious appetite and the world as a place wherein ranged a multitude ofappetites, pursuing and being pursued, hunting and being hunted, eatingand being eaten, all in blindness and confusion, with violence anddisorder, a chaos of gluttony and slaughter, ruled over by chance,merciless, planless, endless.

  But the cub did not think in man-fashion. He did not look at things withwide vision. He was single-purposed, and entertained but one thought ordesire at a time. Besides the law of meat, there were a myriad other andlesser laws for him to learn and obey. The world was filled withsurprise. The stir of the life that was in him, the play of his muscles,was an unending happiness. To run down meat was to experience thrillsand elations. His rages and battles were pleasures. Terror itself, andthe mystery of the unknown, led to his living.

  And there were easements and satisfactions. To have a full stomach, todoze lazily in the sunshine--such things were remuneration in full forhis ardours and toils, while his ardours and tolls were in themselvesself-remunerative. They were expressions of life, and life is alwayshappy when it is expressing itself. So the cub had no quarrel with hishostile environment. He was very much alive, very happy, and very proudof himself.