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.
He began to accompany his mother on the meat-trail, and he saw much of the killing of meat and began to play his part in it.And in his own dim way he learned the law of meat.There were two kinds of life, -- his own kind and the other kind.His own kind included his mother and himself.
The other kind included all live things that moved.But the other kind was divided.One portion was what his own kind killed and ate.This portion was composed of the non-killers and the small killers.The other portion killed and ate his own kind, or was killed and eaten by his own kind.And out of this classification arose the law.The aim of life was meat.Life itself was meat.Life lived on life.There were the eaters and the eaten.
The law was: EAT OR BE EATEN.He did not formulate the law in clear, set terms and moralize about it.He did not even think the law; he merely lived the law without thinking about it at all.
He saw the law operating around him on every side.He had eaten the ptarmigan chicks.The hawk had eaten the ptarmigan-mother.The hawk would also have eaten him.Later, when he had grown more formidable, he wanted to eat the hawk.He had eaten the lynx kitten.The lynx-mother would have eaten him had she not herself been killed and eaten.And so it went.The law was being lived about him by all live things, and he himself was part and parcel of the law.He was a killer.His only food was meat, live meat, that ran away swiftly before him, or flew into the air, or climbed trees, or hid in the ground, or faced him and fought with him, or turned the tables and ran after him.