Three nights later Carboona's watching eyes saw an unaccustomed sight. They saw a gaunt grey shape pass silently and swiftly between the junipers in the light of the setting moon. From the jaws of the shape, a wolf-cub hung, very limp—swaying a little as its bearer trotted.
Past the junipers, past the beds of wild raspberries, over the granite-covered shoulder of the hill, deep into the black heart of the spruce woods, the old wolf went. She knew her way, though her eyes saw no trail. She had passed that way before, during the days and nights when her heart misgave her, because of the strange trail, and the knowledge that a new presence had come into the woods. She had no fear of the forest, so long as it lay far from the trail, and the thing she distrusted. For all that, the great secrecy that was upon her made her shun the open places where the moonlight glared, and keep rather to the good grey glooms where her body melted among the shadows, and seemed itself a shade. And the little furry fatness hanging helpless from her jaws gave itself up limply to its mother's will, and to the vast movement of the night.
The new den she had chosen as a refuge for her cubs lay among the innermost recesses of Carboona, below the granite peaks. No brakes here, no watching junipers: a waste of rock and scrub, scored by deep ravines and dried beds of water-courses that thundered in the thaw.
But black and inhospitable though the region was, it possessed the one thing dear to uneasy motherhood—absolute loneliness. She had dug the den herself, enlarging a natural hollow beside an enormous rock. Not even the father wolf himself knew as yet where the new den was; for by the unwritten law of wolf-life he was banished from the home during the infancy of the cubs.
Here the old wolf deposited her baby, leaving it in shivering loneliness to grow used to the new home as best it might till its brothers and sisters were brought to join it. Five times more the mother made the long double journey, each time carrying a cub. As she returned to the old den on the sixth and last time, the sun was already high above the eastern hills.
The last cub was not in a happy frame of mind. One by one, its brothers and sisters had been taken away from it, which meant that, as each hairy little bundle of warmth went out under the moon, the warmth in the den was that much the less. And when the fifth had followed the way of the others, the remaining cub felt solitary indeed.
At first he lay perfectly still, for that was his mother's command, though she had not put it into words. The deep mother-wisdom that warms the wits of the wild creatures has its own mysterious ways of conveying its meaning. "Lie still!" is one of the very first lessons a mother teaches her young. "Run home!" follows close upon it. To disobey either may mean death.
It grew colder in the den and lonelier. The last cub didn't want to disobey and he really did try to go to sleep; but cold and loneliness are uneasy bed-fellows, and he had a sort of feeling that perhaps if he went to the den door, he might find out where the rest of the family were. The little fat body lay curled up close, and, in spite of the warmth the family had left behind, tiny shivers shook it every now and then.
It was no use any longer pretending to go to sleep. The small bright eyes opened wide, and stared into the shadow that glimmered with the moon. And suddenly, out of the shadow, Fear came, and the cub shivered with something worse than cold. He had never been frightened before. It was a new and terrible experience. It was in his head; it was in his stomach; the thing was all over him; the very den was full.
He lay for a long time, trembling, and whimpering in a small smothered way. He hoped his mother might hear him, and come back; yet he did not dare to cry too loud lest other ears might catch the sound and lead some prowling enemy to the den. Dawn was just beginning to break when at length he could bear it no longer, and, in spite of his mother's strict command, he crawled to the mouth of the den.