At the beginning of the story, what is Ulrich's wish? Does it come true? What's so ironic about this?

If only on this wild night, in this dark, lone spot, he might come across Georg Znaeym, man to man, with none to witness – that was the wish that was uppermost in his thoughts. - These lines fro the story tell what Ulrich wishes. The wish does come true when they run into one another and then find themselves trapped together under a fallen tree. While lying there, they solve their feud and promise to be good to one another in the future; however, in the end, they are approached by a wolf pack and the reader assumes that they will die. Had they resolved the feud before all this happened, they would have lived.