They did not go far—a couple of days’ journey. The she-wolf’s need to
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 and rested. One Eye came to her; but when he touched
her neck gently with his muzzle she snapped at 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 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. 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 merged from 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 cosey. She inspected it with
painstaking care, while One Eye, who had returned, stood in the
entrance and patiently watched her. She dropped her head, with her nose
to the ground and directed toward a point near to her 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, 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 the head for a moment, while her
mouth opened and her tongue lolled peaceably out, and in this way she
expressed that she was pleased and satisfied.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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