1906 white fang jack london - pinkmonke - Pink Monkey

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sufficient, the cry of rage the intruder gave, beginning with a snarl
and rushing abruptly 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 and
snarled valiantly by his mother’s side. But she thrust him
ignominiously away and behind her. Because of the low-roofed
entrance the lynx could not leap in, and when she made a crawling
rush of it the she-wolf sprang upon her and pinned her down.
The cub saw little of the battle. There was a tremendous snarling
and spitting and screeching. The two animals threshed about, the
lynx ripping and tearing with her claws and using her teeth 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 weight of his body he clogged the action of the leg and
thereby saved his mother much damage. A change in the battle
crushed him under both their bodies and wrenched loose his hold.
The next moment the two mothers separated, and, before they
rushed together again, the lynx lashed out at the cub with a huge
forepaw that ripped his shoulder open to the bone and sent him
hurtling sidewise against the wall. Then was added to the uproar
the cub’s shrill yelp of pain and fright. But the fight lasted so long
that he had time to cry himself out and to experience a second
burst of courage; and the end of the battle found him again
clinging to a hind-leg and furiously growling between his teeth.
The lynx was dead. But the she-wolf was very weak and sick. At
first she caressed the cub and licked his wounded shoulder; but the
blood she had lost had taken with it her strength, and for all of a
day and a night she lay by her dead foe’s side, without movement,
scarcely breathing. For a week she never left the cave, except for
water, and then her movements were 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 take the meat-trail again.
The cub’s shoulder was stiff and sore, and for some time he limped
from the terrible slash he had received. But the world now seemed
changed. He went about in it with greater confidence, with a
feeling of prowess that had not been his in the days before the
battle with the lynx. He had looked upon life in a more ferocious
aspect; he had fought; he had buried his teeth in the flesh of a foe;
and he had survived. And because of all this, he carried himself
more boldly, with a touch of defiance that was new in him. He was
no longer afraid of minor things, and much of his timidity had
vanished, though the unknown never ceased to press upon him
with its mysteries and terrors, intangible and ever-menacing.