A cruel, biting blizzard swept across the snow; over the earth moved
misty, fantastic clouds, that drifted slowly across the face of a
pale troubled moon. Towards night-fall, the wolves could be heard in
the valley, howling a summons to their leader from the spot where the
pack always assembled.
The valley descended sharply to a hollow thickly overgrown with red
pines. Thirteen years back an unusually violent storm had swept the
vicinity, and hurled an entire pine belt to the ground. Now, under
the wide, windy sky, spread a luxuriant growth of young firs, while
little oaks, hazels, and alders here and there dotted the depression.
Here the leader of the wolf-pack had his lair. Here for thirteen
years his mate had borne his cubs. He was already old, but huge,
strong, greedy, ferocious, and fearless, with lean legs, powerful
snapping jaws, a short, thick neck on which the hair stood up
shaggily like a short mane and terrified his younger companions.
This great, gaunt old wolf had been leader for seven years, and with
good reason. By day he kept to his lair. At night, terrible and
relentless, he prowled the fields and growled a short summons to his
mates. He led the pack on their quests for food, hunting throughout
the night, racing over plains and down ravines, ravening round farms
and villages. He not only slew elks, horses, bulls, and bears, but
also his own wolves if they were impudent or rebellious. He lived--as
every wolf must live--to hunt, to eat, and to breed.
In winter the snow lay over the land like a dead white pall, and food
was scarce. The wolves sat round in a circle, gnashed their teeth,
and wailed long and plaintively through the night, their noses
pointed at the moon.
Five days back, on a steep slope of the valley not far from the wolf
track to a watering place, and close to a belt of young fir-trees
surrounded by a snow-topped coppice, some men from a neighbouring
farm had set a powerful wolf-trap, above which they had thrown a dead
calf. On their nocturnal prowls the wolves discovered the carcase.
For a long time they sat round it in the grey darkness, howling
plaintively, hungrily gnashing their fangs, afraid to move nearer,
and each one timidly jostling the other forward with cruel vicious
eyes.
At last one young wolf's hunger overcame his fear; he threw himself
on the calf with a shrill squeal, and after him rushed the rest,
whining, growling, raising their tails, bending their bony backs,
bristling the hair on their short thick necks--and into the trap fell
the leader's mate.
They paid no attention to her, but eagerly devoured the calf, and it
was only when they had finished and cleared away all traces of the
orgy that they realised the she-wolf was trapped there for good.
All night she howled and threw herself about, saliva falling from her
dripping jaws, her eyes rolling wildly and emitting little sparks of
green fire as she circled round and round on a clanking chain. In the
morning two farm-hands arrived, threw her on their sleigh and drove
away.
The leader remained alone the whole day. Then, when night again
returned, he called his band together, tore one young wolf to pieces,
rushed round with lowered head and bristling hair, finally leaving
the pack and returning to his lair. The wolves submitted to his
terrible punishment, for he was their chief, who had seized power by
force, and they patiently awaited his return, thinking he had gone on
a solitary food-hunt.
But as the night advanced and he did not come, they began to howl
their urgent summons to him, and now there was an undercurrent of
menace in their cries, the lust to kill, for the code of the wild
beasts prescribed only one penalty for the leader who deserted his
pack--death!