As the wolves advanced the father and mother would steal gradually ahead at either end of the line, rarely hunting themselves, but drawing the nearest cub’s attention to any game they had discovered, and then moving silently to one side and a little ahead to watch the result.  When the cub rushed and missed, and the startled rabbit went flying away, whirling to left or right as rabbits always do, there would be a lightning change at the end of the line.  A terrific rush, a snap of the long jaws like a steel trap,—­then the old wolf would toss back the rabbit with a broken back, for the cub to finish him.  Not till the cubs first, and then the mother, had satisfied their hunger would the old he-wolf hunt for himself.  Then he would disappear, and they would not see him for days at a time, until food was scarce and they needed him once more.

One day, when the cubs were hungry and food scarce because of their persistent hunting near the den, the mother brought them to the edge of a dense thicket where rabbits were plentiful enough, but where the cover was so thick that they could not follow the frightened game for an instant.  The old he-wolf had appeared at a distance and then vanished; and the cubs, trotting along behind the mother, knew nothing of what was coming or what was expected of them.  They lay in hiding on the lee side of the thicket, each one crouching under a bush or root, with the mother off at one side perfectly hidden as usual.

Presently a rabbit appeared, hopping along in a crazy way, and ran plump into the jaws of a wolf cub, which leaped up as if out of the ground, and pulled down his game from the very top of the high jump which Moktaques always gives when he is suddenly startled.  Another and another rabbit appeared mysteriously, and doubled back into the cover before they could be caught.  The cubs were filled with wonder.  Such hunting was never seen before; for rabbits stirred abroad by day, and ran right into the hungry mouths instead of running away.  Then, slinking along like a shadow and stopping to look back and sniff the wind, appeared a big red fox that had been sleeping away the afternoon on top of a stump in the center of the thicket.

The old mother’s eyes began to blaze as Eleemos drew near.  There was a rush, swift and sudden as the swoop of an eagle; a sharp call to follow as the mother’s long jaws closed over the small of the back, just as the fox turned to leap away.  Then she flung the paralyzed animal back like a flash; the young wolves tumbled in upon him; and before he knew what had happened Eleemos the Sly One was stretched out straight, with one cub at his tail and another at his throat, tugging and worrying and grumbling deep in their chests as the lust of their first fighting swept over them.  Then in vague, vanishing glimpses the old he-wolf appeared, quartering swiftly, silently, back and forth through the thicket, driving every living thing down-wind to where the cubs and the mother were waiting to receive it.