Old One Eye was feeling the urge of an impulse, that was, in turn, an instinct that had come down to him from all the fathers of wolves.

He did not question it, nor puzzle over it.

It was there, in the fibre of his being; and it was the most natural thing in the world that he should obey it by turning his back on his new-born family and by trotting out and away on the meat-trail whereby he lived.
Five or six miles from the lair, the stream divided, its forks going off among the mountains at a right angle.

Here, leading up the left fork, he came upon a fresh track.

He smelled it and found it so recent that he crouched swiftly, and looked in the direction in which it disappeared.
Then he turned deliberately and took the right fork.