Muskwa bolted down the mountain as fast as his short legs could carry him. In another second Bruce was after him, and Langdon joined in ten feet behind.
Suddenly Muskwa made a sharp turn, and the momentum with which Bruce was coming carried him thirty or forty feet below him, where the lanky mountaineer stopped himself only by doubling up like a jack-knife and digging toes, hands, elbows, and even his shoulders in the soft shale.
Langdon had switched, and was hot after Muskwa. He flung himself face downward, shirt outspread, just as the cub made another turn, and when he rose to his feet his face was scratched and he spat half a handful of dirt and shale out of his mouth.
Unfortunately for Muskwa his second turn brought him straight down to Bruce, and before he could turn again he was enveloped in sudden darkness and suffocation, and over him there rang out a fiendish and triumphant yell.
"I got 'im!" shouted Bruce.
Inside the shirt Muskwa scratched and bit and snarled, and Bruce was having his hands full when Langdon ran down with the second shirt. Very shortly Muskwa was trussed up like a papoose. His legs and his body were swathed so tightly that he could not move them. His head was not covered. It was the only part of him that showed, and the only part of him that he could move, and it looked so round and frightened and funny that for a minute or two Langdon and Bruce forgot their disappointments and losses of the day and laughed.
Then Langdon sat down on one side of Muskwa, and Bruce on the other, and they filled and lighted their pipes. Muskwa could not even kick an objection.
"A couple of husky hunters we are," said Langdon then. "Come out for a grizzly and end up with that!"
He looked at the cub. Muskwa was eying him so earnestly that Langdon sat in mute wonder for a moment, and then slowly took his pipe from his mouth and stretched out a hand.
"Cubby, cubby, nice cubby," he cajoled softly.
Muskwa's tiny ears were perked forward. His bright eyes were like glass. Bruce, unobserved by Langdon, was grinning expectantly.
"Cubby won't bite—no—no—nice little cubby—we won't hurt cubby—"
The next instant a wild yell startled the mountain-tops as Muskwa's needle-like teeth sank into one of Langdon's fingers. Bruce's howls of joy would have frightened game a mile away.
"You little devil!" gasped Langdon, and then, as he sucked his wounded finger, he laughed with Bruce. "He's a sport—a dead game sport," he added. "We'll call him Spitfire, Bruce. By George, I've wanted a cub like that ever since I first came into the mountains. I'm going to take him home with me! Ain't he a funny looking little cuss?"
Muskwa shifted his head, the only part of him that was not as stiffly immovable as a mummy, and scrutinized Bruce. Langdon rose to his feet and looked back to the sky-line. His face was set and hard.
"Four dogs!" he said, as if speaking to himself. "Three down below—and one up there!" He was silent for a moment, and then said: "I can't understand it, Bruce. They've cornered fifty bears for us, and until to-day we've never lost a dog."
Bruce was looping a buckskin thong about Muskwa's middle, making of it a sort of handle by which he could carry the cub as he would have conveyed a pail of water or a slab of bacon. He stood up, and Muskwa dangled at the end of his string.
"We've run up against a killer," he said. "An' a meat-killin' grizzly is the worst animal on the face of the earth when it comes to a fight or a hunt. The dogs'll never hold 'im, Jimmy, an' if it don't get dark pretty soon there won't none of the bunch come back. They'll quit at dark—if there's any left. The old fellow's got our wind, an' you can bet he knows what knocked him down up there on the snow. He's hikin'—an' hikin' fast. When we see 'im ag'in it'll be twenty miles from here."
Langdon went up for the guns. When he returned Bruce led the way down the mountain, carrying Muskwa by the buckskin thong. For a few moments they paused on the blood-stained ledge of rock where Thor had wreaked his vengeance upon his tormentors. Langdon bent over the dog the grizzly had decapitated.
"This is Biscuits," he said. "And we always thought she was the one coward of the bunch. The other two are Jane and Tober; old Fritz is up on the summit. Three of the best dogs we had, Bruce!"
Bruce was looking over the ledge. He pointed downward.
"There's another—pitched clean off the face o' the mount'in!" he gasped. "Jimmy, that's five!"
Langdon's fists were clenched tightly as he stared over the edge of the precipice. A choking sound came from his throat. Bruce understood its meaning. From where they stood they could see a black patch on the upturned breast of the dog a hundred feet under them. Only one of the pack was marked like that. It was Langdon's favourite. He had made her a camp pet.
"It's Dixie," he said. For the first time he felt a surge of anger sweep through him, and his face was white as he turned back to the trail. "I've got more than one reason for getting that grizzly now, Bruce," he added. "Wild horses can't tear me away from these mountains until I kill him. I'll stick until winter if I have to. I swear I'm going to kill him—if he doesn't run away."
"He won't do that," said Bruce tersely, as he once more swung down the trail with Muskwa.
Until now Muskwa had been stunned into submissiveness by what must have appeared to him to be an utterly hopeless situation. He had strained every muscle in his body to move a leg or a paw, but he was swathed as tightly as Rameses had ever been. But now, however, it slowly dawned upon him that as he dangled back and forth his face frequently brushed his enemy's leg, and he still had the use of his teeth. He watched his opportunity, and this came when Bruce took a long step down from a rock, thus allowing Muskwa's body to rest for the fraction of a second on the surface of the stone from which he was descending.
Quicker than a wink Muskwa took a bite. It was a good deep bite, and if Langdon's howl had stirred the silences a mile away the yell which now came from Bruce beat him by at least a half. It was the wildest, most blood-curdling sound Muskwa had ever heard, even more terrible than the barking of the dogs, and it frightened him so that he released his hold at once.
Then, again, he was amazed. These queer bipeds made no effort to retaliate. The one he had bitten hopped up and down on one foot in a most unaccountable manner for a minute or so, while the other sat down on a boulder and rocked back and forth, with his hands on his stomach, and made a queer, uproarious noise with his mouth wide open. Then the other stopped his hopping and also made that queer noise.
It was anything but laughter to Muskwa. But it impinged upon him the truth of one of two things: either these grotesque looking monsters did not dare to fight him, or they were very peaceful and had no intention of harming him. But they were more cautious thereafter, and as soon as they reached the valley they carried him between them, strung on a rifle-barrel.
It was almost dark when they approached a clump of balsams red with the glow of a fire. It was Muskwa's first fire. Also he saw his first horses, terrific looking monsters even larger than Thor.
A third man—Metoosin, the Indian—came out to meet the hunters, and into this creature's hands Muskwa found himself transferred. He was laid on his side with the glare of the fire in his eyes, and while one of his captors held him by both ears, and so tightly that it hurt, another fastened a hobble-strap around his neck for a collar. A heavy halter rope was then tied to the ring on this strap, and the end of the rope was fastened to a tree.
During these operations Muskwa snarled and snapped as much as he could. In another half-minute he was free of the shirts, and as he staggered on four wobbly legs, from which all power of flight had temporarily gone, he bared his tiny fangs and snarled as fiercely as he could.
To his further amazement this had no effect upon his strange company at all, except that the three of them—even the Indian—opened their mouths and joined in that loud and incomprehensible din, to which one of them had given voice when he sank his teeth into his captor's leg on the mountainside. It was all tremendously puzzling to Muskwa.
Greatly to Muskwa's relief the three men soon turned away from him and began to busy themselves about the fire. This gave him a chance to escape, and he pulled and tugged at the end of the rope until he nearly choked himself to death. Finally he gave up in despair, and crumpling himself up against the foot of the balsam he began to watch the camp.
He was not more than thirty feet from the fire. Bruce was washing his hands in a canvas basin. Langdon was mopping his face with a towel. Close to the fire Metoosin was kneeling, and from the big black skittle he was holding over the coals came the hissing and sputtering of fat caribou steaks, and about the pleasantest smell that had ever come Muskwa's way. The air all about him was heavy with the aroma of good things.
When Langdon had finished drying his face he opened a can of something. It was sweetened condensed milk. He poured the white fluid into a basin, and came with it toward Muskwa. The cub had unsuccessfully attempted flight on the ground until his neck was sore; now he climbed the tree. He went up so quickly that Langdon was astonished, and he snarled and spat at the man as the basin of milk was placed where he would almost fall into it when he came down.
Muskwa remained at the end of his rope up the tree, and for a long time the hunters paid no more attention to him. He could see them eating and he could hear them talking as they planned a new campaign against Thor.
"We've got to trick him after what happened to-day," declared Bruce. "No more tracking 'im after this, Jimmy. We can track until doomsday an' he'll always know where we are." He paused for a moment and listened. "Funny the dogs don't come," he said. "I wonder—"
He looked at Langdon.
"Impossible!" exclaimed the latter, as he read the significance of his companion's look. "Bruce, you don't mean to say that bear might kill them all!"
"I've hunted a good many grizzlies," replied the mountaineer quietly, "but I ain't never hunted a trickier one than this. Jimmy, he trapped them dogs on the ledge, an' he tricked the dog he killed up on the peak. He's liable to get 'em all into a corner, an' if that happens—"
He shrugged his shoulders suggestively.
Again Langdon listened.
"If there were any alive at dark they should be here pretty soon," he said. "I'm sorry, now—sorry we didn't leave the dogs at home."
Bruce laughed a little grimly.
"Fortunes o' war, Jimmy," he said. "You don't go hunting grizzlies with a pack of lapdogs, an' you've got to expect to lose some of them sooner or later. We've tackled the wrong bear, that's all. He's beat us."
"Beat us?"
"I mean he's beat us in a square game, an' we dealt a raw hand at that in using dogs at all. Do you want that bear bad enough to go after him my way?"
Langdon nodded.
"What's your scheme?"
"You've got to drop pretty idees when you go grizzly hunting," began Bruce. "And especially when you run up against a 'killer.' There won't be any hour between now an' denning-up time that this grizzly doesn't get the wind from all directions. How? He'll make detours. I'll bet if there was snow on the ground you'd find him back-tracking two miles out of every six, so he can get the wind of anything that's following him. An' he'll travel mostly nights, layin' high up in the rocks an' shale during the day. If you want any more shootin', there's just two things to do, an' the best of them two things is to move on and find other bears."
"Which I won't do, Bruce. What's your scheme for getting this one?"
Bruce was silent for several moments before he replied.
"We've got his range mapped out to a mile," he said then. "It begins up at the first break we crossed, an' it ends down here where we came into this valley. It's about twenty-five miles up an' down. He don't touch the mount'ins west of this valley nor the mount'ins east of the other valleys an' he's dead certain to keep on makin' circles so long as we're after him. He's hikin' southward now on the other side of the range.
"We'll lay here for a few days an' not move. Then we'll start Metoosin through the valley over there with the dogs, if there's any left, and we'll start south through this valley at the same time. One of us will keep to the slopes an' the other to the bottom, an' we'll travel slow. Get the idee?
"That grizzly won't leave his country, an' Metoosin is pretty near bound to drive him around to us. We'll let him do the open hunting an' we'll skulk. The bear can't get past us both without giving one of us shooting."
"It sounds good," agreed Langdon. "And I've got a lame knee that I'm not unwilling to nurse for a few days."
Scarcely were the words out of Langdon's mouth when a sudden rattle of hobble-chains and the startled snort of a grazing horse out in the meadow brought them both to their feet.
"Utim!" whispered Metoosin, his dark face aglow in the firelight.
"You're right—the dogs," said Bruce, and he whistled softly.
They heard a movement in the brush near them, and a moment later two of the dogs came into the firelight. They slunk in, half on their bellies, and as they prostrated themselves at the hunters' feet a third and a fourth joined them.
They were not like the pack that had gone out that morning. There were deep hollows in their sides; their wiry crests were flat; they were hard run, and they knew that they were beaten. Their aggressiveness was gone, and they had the appearance of whipped curs.
A fifth came in out of the night. He was limping, and dragging a torn foreleg. The head and throat of one of the others was red with blood. They all lay flat on their bellies, as if expecting condemnation.
"We have failed," their attitude said; "we are beaten, and this is all of us that are left."
Mutely Bruce and Langdon stared at them. They listened—waited. No other came. And then they looked at each other.
"Two more of them gone," said Langdon.
Bruce turned to a pile of panniers and canvases and pulled out the dog-leashes. Up in his tree Muskwa was all atremble. Within a few yards of him he saw again the white-fanged horde that had chased Thor and had driven him into the rock-crevice. Of the men he was no longer greatly afraid. They had attempted him no harm, and he had ceased to quake and snarl when one of them passed near. But the dogs were monsters. They had given battle to Thor. They must have beaten him, for Thor had run away.
The tree to which Muskwa was fastened was not much more than a sapling, and he lay in the saddle of a crotch five feet from the ground when Metoosin led one of the dogs past him. The Airedale saw him and made a sudden spring that tore the leash from the Indian's hand. His leap carried him almost up to Muskwa. He was about to make another spring when Langdon rushed forward with a fierce cry, caught the dog by his collar, and with the end of the leash gave him a sound beating. Then he led him away.
This act puzzled Muskwa more than ever. The man had saved him. He had beaten the monster with the red mouth and the white fangs, and all of those monsters were now being taken away at the end of ropes.
When Langdon returned he stopped close to Muskwa's tree and talked to him. Muskwa allowed Langdon's hand to approach within six inches of him, and did not snap at it. Then a strange and sudden thrill shot through him. While his head was turned a little Langdon had boldly put his hand on his furry back. And in the touch there was not hurt! His mother had never put her paw on him as gently as that!
Half a dozen times in the next ten minutes Langdon touched him. For the first three or four times Muskwa bared his two rows of shining teeth, but he made no sound. Gradually he ceased even to bare his teeth.
Langdon left him then, and in a few moments he returned with a chunk of raw caribou meat. He held this close to Muskwa's nose. Muskwa could smell it, but he backed away from it, and at last Langdon placed it beside the basin at the foot of the tree and returned to where Bruce was smoking.
"Inside of two days he'll be eating out of my hand," he said.
It was not long before the camp became very quiet. Langdon, Bruce, and the Indian rolled themselves in their blankets and were soon asleep. The fire burned lower and lower. Soon there was only a single smouldering log. An owl hooted a little deeper in the timber. The drone of the valley and the mountains filled the peaceful night. The stars grew brighter. Far away Muskwa heard the rumbling of a boulder rolling down the side of a mountain.
There was nothing to fear now. Everything was still and asleep but himself, and very cautiously he began to back down the tree. He reached the foot of it, loosed his hold, and half fell into the basin of condensed milk, a part of it slopping up over his face. Involuntarily he shot out his tongue and licked his chops, and the sweet, sticky stuff that it gathered filled him with a sudden and entirely unexpected pleasure. For a quarter of an hour he licked himself. And then, as if the secret of this delightful ambrosia had just dawned upon him, his bright little eyes fixed themselves covetously upon the tin basin. He approached it with commendable strategy and caution, circling first on one side of it and then on the other, every muscle in his body prepared for a quick spring backward if it should make a jump for him. At last his nose touched the thick, luscious feast in the basin, and he did not raise his head again until the last drop of it was gone.
The condensed milk was the one biggest factor in the civilizing of Muskwa. It was the missing link that connected certain things in his lively little mind. He knew that the same hand that had touched him so gently had also placed this strange and wonderful feast at the foot of his tree, and that same hand had also offered him meat. He did not eat the meat, but he licked the interior of the basin until it shone like a mirror in the starlight.
In spite of the milk, he was still filled with a desire to escape, though his efforts were not as frantic and unreasoning as they had been. Experience had taught him that it was futile to jump and tug at the end of his leash, and now he fell to chewing at the rope. Had he gnawed in one place he would probably have won freedom before morning, but when his jaws became tired he rested, and when he resumed his work it was usually at a fresh place in the rope. By midnight his gums were sore, and he gave up his exertions entirely.
Humped close to the tree, ready to climb up it at the first sign of danger, the cub waited for morning. Not a wink did he sleep. Even though he was less afraid than he had been, he was terribly lonesome. He missed Thor, and he whimpered so softly that the men a few yards away could not have heard him had they been awake. If Pipoonaskoos had come into the camp then he would have welcomed him joyfully.
Morning came, and Metoosin was the first out of his blankets. He built a fire, and this roused Bruce and Langdon. The latter, after he had dressed himself, paid a visit to Muskwa, and when he found the basin licked clean he showed his pleasure by calling the others' attention to what had happened.
Muskwa had climbed to his crotch in the tree, and again he tolerated the stroking touch of Langdon's hand. Then Langdon brought forth another can from a cowhide pannier and opened it directly under Muskwa, so that he could see the creamy white fluid as it was turned into the basin. He held the basin up to Muskwa, so close that the milk touched the cub's nose, and for the life of him Muskwa could not keep his tongue in his mouth. Inside of five minutes he was eating from the basin in Langdon's hand! But when Bruce came up to watch the proceedings the cub bared all his teeth and snarled.
"Bears make better pets than dogs," affirmed Bruce a little later, when they were eating breakfast. "He'll be following you around like a puppy in a few days, Jimmy."
"I'm getting fond of the little cuss already," replied Langdon. "What was that you were telling me about Jameson's bears, Bruce?"
"Jameson lived up in the Kootenay country," said Bruce. "Reg'lar hermit, I guess you'd call him. Came out of the mountains only twice a year to get grub. He made pets of grizzlies. For years he had one as big as this fellow we're chasing. He got 'im when a cub, an 'when I saw him he weighed a thousand pounds an' followed Jameson wherever he went like a dog. Even went on his hunts with him, an 'they slept beside the same campfire. Jameson loved bears, an' he'd never kill one."
Langdon was silent. After a moment he said: "And I'm beginning to love them, Bruce. I don't know just why, but there's something about bears that makes you love them. I'm not going to shoot many more—perhaps none after we get this dog-killer we're after. I almost believe he will be my last bear." Suddenly he clenched his hands, and added angrily: "And to think there isn't a province in the Dominion or a state south of the Border that has a 'closed season' for bear! It's an outrage, Bruce. They're classed with vermin, and can be exterminated at all seasons. They can even be dug out of their dens with their young—and—so help me Heaven!—I've helped to dig them out! We're beasts, Bruce. Sometimes I almost think it's a crime for a man to carry a gun. And yet—I go on killing."
"It's in our blood," laughed Bruce, unmoved. "Did you ever know a man, Jimmy, that didn't like to see things die? Wouldn't every mother's soul of 'em go to a hanging if they had the chance? Won't they crowd like buzzards round a dead horse to get a look at a man crushed to a pulp under a rock or a locomotive engine? Why, Jimmie, if there weren't no law to be afraid of, we humans'd be killing one another for the fun of it! We would. It's born in us to want to kill."
"And we take it all out on brute creation," mused Langdon. "After all, we can't have much sympathy for ourselves if a generation or two of us are killed in war, can we? Mebby you're right, Bruce. Inasmuch as we can't kill our neighbours legally whenever we have the inclination, it's possible the Chief Arbiter of things sends us a war now and then to relieve us temporarily of our blood-thirstiness. Hello, what in thunder is the cub up to now?"
Muskwa had fallen the wrong way out of his crotch and was dangling like the victim at the end of a hangman's rope. Langdon ran to him, caught him boldly in his bare hands, lifted him up over the limb and placed him on the ground. Muskwa did not snap at him or even growl.
Bruce and Metoosin were away from camp all of that day, spying over the range to the westward, and Langdon was left to doctor a knee which he had battered against a rock the previous day. He spent most of his time in company with Muskwa. He opened a can of their griddle-cake syrup and by noon he had the cub following him about the tree and straining to reach the dish which he held temptingly just out of reach. Then he would sit down, and Muskwa would climb half over his lap to reach the syrup.
At his present age Muskwa's affection and confidence were easily won. A baby black bear is very much like a human baby: he likes milk, he loves sweet things, and he wants to cuddle up close to any living thing that is good to him. He is the most lovable creature on four legs—round and soft and fluffy, and so funny that he is sure to keep every one about him in good humour. More than once that day Langdon laughed until the tears came, and especially when Muskwa made determined efforts to climb up his leg to reach the dish of syrup.
As for Muskwa, he had gone syrup mad. He could not remember that his mother had ever given him anything like it, and Thor had produced nothing better than fish.
Late in the afternoon Langdon untied Muskwa's rope and led him for a stroll down toward the creek. He carried the syrup dish and every few yards he would pause and let the cub have a taste of its contents. After half an hour of this manoeuvring he dropped his end of the leash entirely, and walked campward. And Muskwa followed! It was a triumph, and in Langdon's veins there pulsed a pleasurable thrill which his life in the open had never brought to him before.
It was late when Metoosin returned, and he was quite surprised that Bruce had not shown up. Darkness came, and they built up the fire. They were finishing supper an hour later when Bruce came in, carrying something swung over his shoulders. He tossed it close to where Muskwa was hidden behind his tree.
"A skin like velvet, and some meat for the dogs," he said. "I shot it with my pistol."
He sat down and began eating. After a little Muskwa cautiously approached the carcass that lay doubled up three or four feet from him. He smelled of it, and a curious thrill shot through him. Then he whimpered softly as he muzzled the soft fur, still warm with life. And for a time after that he was very still.
For the thing that Bruce had brought into camp and flung at the foot of his tree was the dead body of little Pipoonaskoos!
That night the big loneliness returned to Muskwa. Bruce and Metoosin were so tired after their hard climb over the range that they went to bed early, and Langdon followed them, leaving Pipoonaskoos where Bruce had first thrown him.
Scarcely a move had Muskwa made after the discovery that had set his heart beating a little faster. He did not know what death was, or what it meant, and as Pipoonaskoos was so warm and soft he was sure that he would move after a little. He had no inclination to fight him now.
Again it grew very, very still, and the stars filled the sky, and the fire burned low. But Pipoonaskoos did not move. Gently at first, Muskwa began nosing him and pulling at his silken hair, and as he did this he whimpered softly, as if saying, "I don't want to fight you any more, Pipoonaskoos! Wake up, and let's be friends!"
But still Pipoonaskoos did not stir, and at last Muskwa gave up all hope of waking him. And still whimpering to his fat little enemy of the green meadow how sorry he was that he had chased him, he snuggled close up to Pipoonaskoos and in time went to sleep.
Langdon was first up in the morning, and when he came over to see how Muskwa had fared during the night he suddenly stopped, and for a full minute he stood without moving, and then a low, strange cry broke from his lips. For Muskwa and Pipoonaskoos were snuggled as closely as they could have snuggled had both been living, and in some way Muskwa had arranged it so that one of the dead cub's little paws was embracing him.
Quietly Langdon returned to where Bruce was sleeping, and in a minute or two Bruce returned with him, rubbing his eyes. And then he, too, stared, and the men looked at each other.
"Dog meat," breathed Langdon. "You brought it home for dog meat, Bruce!"
Bruce did not answer, Langdon said nothing more, and neither talked very much for a full hour after that. During that hour Metoosin came and dragged Pipoonaskoos away, and instead of being skinned and fed to the dogs he was put into a hole down in the creek-bottom and covered with sand and stones. That much, at least, Bruce and Langdon did for Pipoonaskoos.
This day Metoosin and Bruce again went over the range. The mountaineer had brought back with him bits of quartz in which were unmistakable signs of gold, and they returned with an outfit for panning.
Langdon continued his education of Muskwa. Several times he took the cub near the dogs, and when they snarled and strained at the ends of their leashes he whipped them, until with quick understanding they gripped the fact that Muskwa, although a bear, must not be harmed.
In the afternoon of this second day he freed the cub entirely from the rope, and he had no difficulty in recapturing it when he wanted to tie it up again. The third and fourth days Bruce and the Indian explored the valley west of the range and convinced themselves finally that the "colours" they found were only a part of the flood-drifts, and would not lead to fortune.
On this fourth night, which happened to be thick with clouds, and chilly, Langdon experimented by taking Muskwa to bed with him. He expected trouble. But Muskwa was as quiet as a kitten, and once he found a proper nest for himself he scarcely made a move until morning. A part of the night Langdon slept with one of his hands resting on the cub's soft, warm body.
According to Bruce it was now time to continue the hunt for Thor, but a change for the worse in Langdon's knee broke in upon their plans. It was impossible for Langdon to walk more than a quarter of a mile at a time, and the position he was compelled to take in the saddle caused him so much pain that to prosecute the hunt even on horseback was out of the question.
"A few more days won't hurt any," consoled Bruce. "If we give the old fellow a longer rest he may get a bit careless."
The three days that followed were not without profit and pleasure for Langdon. Muskwa was teaching him more than he had ever known about bears, and especially bear cubs, and he made notes voluminously.
The dogs were now confined to a clump of trees fully three hundred yards from the camp, and gradually the cub was given his freedom. He made no effort to run away, and he soon discovered that Bruce and Metoosin were also his friends. But Langdon was the only one he would follow.
On the morning of the eighth day after their pursuit of Thor, Bruce and Metoosin rode over into the eastward valley with the dogs. Metoosin was to have a day's start, and Bruce planned to return to camp that afternoon so that he and Langdon could begin their hunt up the valley the next day.
It was a glorious morning. A cool breeze came from the north and west, and about nine o'clock Langdon fastened Muskwa to his tree, saddled a horse, and rode down the valley. He had no intention of hunting. It was a joy merely to ride and breathe in the face of that wind and gaze upon the wonders of the mountains.
He travelled northward for three or four miles, until he came to a broad, low slope that broke through the range to the westward. A desire seized upon him to look over into the other valley, and as his knee was giving him no trouble he cut a zigzag course upward that in half an hour brought him almost to the top.
Here he came to a short, steep slide that compelled him to dismount and continue on foot. At the summit he found himself on a level sweep of meadow, shut in on each side of him by the bare rock walls of the split mountains, and a quarter of a mile ahead he could see where the meadow broke suddenly into the slope that shelved downward into the valley he was seeking.
Halfway over this quarter of a mile of meadow there was a dip into which he could not see, and as he came to the edge of this he flung himself suddenly upon his face and for a minute or two lay as motionless as a rock. Then he slowly raised his head.
A hundred yards from him, gathered about a small water-hole in the hollow, was a herd of goats. There were thirty or more, most of them Nannies with young kids. Langdon could make out only two Billies in the lot. For half an hour he lay still and watched them. Then one of the Nannies struck out with her two kids for the side of the mountain; another followed, and seeing that the whole band was about to move, Langdon rose quickly to his feet and ran as fast as he could toward them.
For a moment Nannies, Billies, and little kids were paralyzed by his sudden appearance. They faced half about and stood as if without the power of flight until he had covered half the distance between t hem. Then their wits seemed to return all at once, and they broke in a wild panic for the side of the nearest mountain. Their hoofs soon began to clatter on boulder and shale, and for another half-hour Langdon heard the hollow booming of the rocks loosened by their feet high up among the crags and peaks. At the end of that time they were infinitesimal white dots on the sky-line.
He went on, and a few minutes later looked down into the other valley. Southward this valley was shut out from his vision by a huge shoulder of rock. It was not very high, and he began to climb it. He had almost reached the top when his toe caught in a piece of slate, and in falling he brought his rifle down with tremendous force on a boulder.
He was not hurt, except for a slight twinge in his lame knee. But his gun was a wreck. The stock was shattered close to the breech and a twist of his hand broke it off entirely.
As he carried two extra rifles in his outfit the mishap did not disturb Langdon as much as it might otherwise have done, and he continued to climb over the rocks until he came to what appeared to be a broad, smooth ledge leading around the sandstone spur of the mountain. A hundred feet farther on he found that the ledge ended in a perpendicular wall of rock. From this point, however, he had a splendid view of the broad sweep of country between the two ranges to the south. He sat down, pulled out his pipe, and prepared to enjoy the magnificent panorama under him while he was getting his wind.
Through his glasses he could see for miles, and what he looked upon was an unhunted country. Scarcely half a mile away a band of caribou was filing slowly across the bottom toward the green slopes to the west. He caught the glint of many ptarmigan wings in the sunlight below. After a time, fully two miles away, he saw sheep grazing on a thinly verdured slide.
He wondered how many valleys there were like this in the vast reaches of the Canadian mountains that stretched three hundred miles from sea to prairie and a thousand miles north and south. Hundreds, even thousands, he told himself, and each wonderful valley a world complete within itself; a world filled with its own life, its own lakes and streams and forests, its own joys and its own tragedies.
Here in this valley into which he gazed was the same soft droning and the same warm sunshine that had filled all the other valleys; and yet here, also, was a different life. Other bears ranged the slopes that he could see dimly with his naked eyes far to the west and north. It was a new domain, filled with other promise and other mystery, and he forgot time and hunger as he sat lost in the enchantment of it.
It seemed to Langdon that these hundreds or thousands of valleys would never grow old for him; that he could wander on for all time, passing from one into another, and that each would possess its own charm, its own secrets to be solved, its own life to be learned. To him they were largely inscrutable; they were cryptic, as enigmatical as life itself, hiding their treasures as they droned through the centuries, giving birth to multitudes of the living, demanding in return other multitudes of the dead. As he looked off through the sunlit space he wondered what the story of this valley would be, and how many volumes it would fill, if the valley itself could tell it.
First of all, he knew, it would whisper of the creation of a world; it would tell of oceans torn and twisted and thrown aside—of those first strange eons of time when there was no night, but all was day; when weird and tremendous monsters stalked where he now saw the caribou drinking at the creek, and when huge winged creatures half bird and half beast swept the sky where he now saw an eagle soaring.
And then it would tell of The Change—of that terrific hour when the earth tilted on its axis, and night came, and a tropical world was turned into a frigid one, and new kinds of life were born to fill it.
It must have been long after that, thought Langdon, that the first bear came to replace the mammoth, the mastodon, and the monstrous beasts that had been their company. And that first bear was the forefather of the grizzly he and Bruce were setting forth to kill the next day!
So engrossed was Langdon in his thoughts that he did not hear a sound behind him. And then something roused him.
It was as if one of the monsters he had been picturing in his imagination had let out a great breath close to him. He turned slowly, and the next moment his heart seemed to stop its beating; his blood seemed to grow cold and lifeless in his veins.
Barring the ledge not more than fifteen feet from him, his great jaws agape, his head moving slowly from side to side as he regarded his trapped enemy, stood Thor, the King of the Mountains!
And in that space of a second or two Langdon's hands involuntarily gripped at his broken rifle, and he decided that he was doomed!
A broken, choking breath—a stifled sound that was scarcely a cry—was all that came from Langdon's lips as he saw the monstrous grizzly looking at him. In the ten seconds that followed he lived hours.
His first thought was that he was powerless—utterly powerless. He could not even run, for the rock wall was behind him; he could not fling himself valleyward, for there was a sheer fall of a hundred feet on that side. He was face to face with death, a death as terrible as that which had overtaken the dogs.
And yet in these last moments Langdon did not lose himself in terror. He noted even the redness in the avenging grizzly's eyes. He saw the naked scat along his back where one of his bullets had plowed; he saw the bare spot where another of his bullets had torn its way through Thor's fore-shoulder. And he believed, as he observed these things, that Thor had deliberately trailed him, that the bear had followed him along the ledge and had cornered him here that he might repay in full measure what had been inflicted upon him.
Thor advanced—just one step; and then in that slow, graceful movement, reared himself to full height. Langdon, even then, thought that he was magnificent. On his part, the man did not move; he looked steadily up at Thor, and he had made up his mind what to do when the great beast lunged forward. He would fling himself over the edge. Down below there was one chance in a thousand for life. There might be a ledge or a projecting spur to catch him.
And Thor!
Suddenly—unexpectedly—he had come upon man! This was the creature that had hunted him, this was the creature that had hurt him—and it was so near that he could reach out with his paw and crush it! And how weak, and white, and shrinking it looked now! Where was its strange thunder? Where was its burning lightning? Why did it make no sound?
Even a dog would have done more than this creature, for the dog would have shown its fangs; it would have snarled, it would have fought. But this thing that was man did nothing. And a great, slow doubt swept through Thor's massive head. Was it really this shrinking, harmless, terrified thing that had hurt him? He smelled the man-smell. It was thick. And yet this time there came with it no hurt.
And then, slowly again, Thor came down to all fours. Steadily he looked at the man.
Had Langdon moved then he would have died. But Thor was not, like man, a murderer. For another half-minute he waited for a hurt, for some sign of menace. Neither came, and he was puzzled. His nose swept the ground, and Langdon saw the dust rise where the grizzly's hot breath stirred it. And after that, for another long and terrible thirty seconds, the bear and the man looked at each other.
Then very slowly—and doubtfully—Thor half turned. He growled. His lips drew partly back. Yet he saw no reason to fight, for that shrinking, white-faced pigmy crouching on the rock made no movement to offer him battle. He saw that he could not go on, for the ledge was blocked by the mountain wall. Had there been a trail the story might have been different for Langdon. As it was, Thor disappeared slowly in the direction from which he had come, his great head hung low, his long claws click, click, clicking like ivory castanets as he went.
Not until then did it seem to Langdon that he breathed again, and that his heart resumed its beating. He gave a great sobbing gasp. He rose to his feet, and his legs seemed weak. He waited—one minute, two, three; and then he stole cautiously to the twist in the ledge around which Thor had gone.
The rocks were clear, and he began to retrace his own steps toward the meadowy break, watching and listening, and still clutching the broken parts of his rifle. When he came to the edge of the plain he dropped down behind a huge boulder.
Three hundred yards away Thor was ambling slowly over the crest of the dip toward the eastward valley. Not until the bear reappeared on the farther ridge of the hollow, and then vanished again, did Langdon follow.
When he reached the slope on which he had hobbled his horse Thor was no longer in sight. The horse was where he had left it. Not until he was in the saddle did Langdon feel that he was completely safe. Then he laughed, a nervous, broken, joyous sort of laugh, and as he scanned the valley he filled his pipe with fresh tobacco.
"You great big god of a bear!" he whispered, and every fibre in him was trembling in a wonderful excitement as he found voice for the first time. "You—you monster with a heart bigger than man!" And then he added, under his breath, as if not conscious that he was speaking: "If I'd cornered you like that I'd have killed you! And you! You cornered me, and let me live!"
He rode toward camp, and as he went he knew that this day had given the final touch to the big change that had been working in him. He had met the King of the Mountains; he had stood face to face with death, and in the last moment the four-footed thing he had hunted and maimed had been merciful. He believed that Bruce would not understand; that Bruce could not understand; but unto himself the day and the hour had brought its meaning in a way that he would not forget so long as he lived, and he knew that hereafter and for all time he would not again hunt the life of Thor, or the lives of any of his kind.
Langdon reached the camp and prepared himself some dinner, and as he ate this, with Muskwa for company, he made new plans for the days and weeks that were to follow. He would send Bruce back to overtake Metoosin the next day, and they would no longer hunt the big grizzly. They would go on to the Skeena and possibly even up to the edge of the Yukon, and then swing eastward into the caribou country some time early in September, hitting back toward civilization on the prairie side of the Rockies. He would take Muskwa with them. Back in the land of men and cities they would be great friends. It did not occur to him just then what this would mean for Muskwa.
It was two o'clock, and he was still dreaming of new and unknown trails into the North when a sound came to rouse and disturb him. For a few minutes he paid no attention to it, for it seemed to be only a part of the droning murmur of the valley. But slowly and steadily it rose above this, and at last he got up from where he was lying with his back to a tree and walked out from the timber, where he could hear more plainly.
Muskwa followed him, and when Langdon stopped the tan-faced cub also stopped. His little ears shot out inquisitively. He turned his head to the north. From that direction the sound was coming.
In another moment Langdon had recognized it, and yet even then he told himself that his ears must be playing him false. It could not be the barking of dogs! By this time Bruce and Metoosin were far to the south with the pack; at least Metoosin should be, and Bruce was on his return to the camp! Quickly the sound grew more distinct, and at last he knew that he could not be mistaken. The dogs were coming up the valley. Something had turned Bruce and Metoosin northward instead of into the south. And the pack was giving tongue—that fierce, heated baying which told him they were again on the fresh spoor of game. A sudden thrill shot through him. There could be but one living thing in the length and breadth of the valley that Bruce would set the dogs after, and that was the big grizzly!
For a few moments longer Langdon stood and listened. Then he hurried back to camp, tied Muskwa to his tree, armed himself with another rifle, and resaddled his horse. Five minutes later he was riding swiftly in the direction of the range where a short time before Thor had given him his life.
Thor heard the dogs when they were a mile away. There were two reasons why he was even less in a mood to run from them now than a few days before. Of the dogs alone he had no more fear than if they had been so many badgers, or so many whistlers piping at him from the rocks. He had found them all mouth and little fang, and easy to kill. It was what followed close after them that disturbed him. But to-day he had stood face to face with the thing that had brought the strange scent into his valleys, and it had not offered to hurt him, and he had refused to kill it. Besides, he was again seeking Iskwao, the she-bear, and man is not the only animal that will risk his life for love.
After killing his last dog at dusk of that fatal day when they had pursued him over the mountain Thor had done just what Bruce thought that he would do, and instead of continuing southward had made a wider detour toward the north, and the third night after the fight and the loss of Muskwa he found Iskwao again. In the twilight of that same evening Pipoonaskoos had died, and Thor had heard the sharp cracking of Bruce's automatic. All that night and the next day and the night that followed he spent with Iskwao, and then he left her once more. A third time he was seeking her when he found Langdon in the trap on the ledge, and he had not yet got wind of her when he first heard the baying of the dogs on his trail.
He was travelling southward, which brought him nearer the hunters' camp. He was keeping to the high slopes where there were little dips and meadows, broken by patches of shale, deep coulees, and occasionally wild upheavals of rock. He was keeping the wind straight ahead so that he would not fail to catch the smell of Iskwao when he came near her, and with the baying of the dogs he caught no scent of the pursuing beasts, or of the two men who were riding behind them.
At another time he would have played his favourite trick of detouring so that the danger would be ahead of him, with the wind in his favour. Caution had now become secondary to his desire to find his mate. The dogs were less than half a mile away when he stopped suddenly, sniffed the air for a moment, and then went on swiftly until he was halted by a narrow ravine.
Up that ravine Iskwao was coming from a dip lower down the mountain, and she was running. The yelping of the pack was fierce and close when Thor scrambled down in time to meet her as she rushed upward. Iskwao paused for a single moment, smelled noses with Thor, and then went on, her ears laid back flat and sullen and her throat filled with growling menace.
Thor followed her, and he also growled. He knew that his mate was fleeing from the dogs, and again that deadly and slowly increasing wrath swept through him as he climbed after her higher up the mountain.
In such an hour as this Thor was at his worst. He was a fighter when pursued as the dogs had pursued him a week before—but he was a demon, terrible and without mercy, when danger threatened his mate.
He fell farther and farther behind Iskwao, and twice lie turned, his fangs gleaming under drawn lips, and his defiance rolling back upon his enemies in low thunder.
When he came up out of the coulee he was in the shadow of the peak, and Iskwao had already disappeared in her skyward scramble. Where she had gone was a wild chaos of rock-slide and the piled-up débris of fallen and shattered masses of sandstone crag. The sky-line was not more than three hundred yards above him. He looked up. Iskwao was among the rocks, and here was the place to fight. The dogs were close upon him now. They were coming up the last stretch of the coulee, baying loudly. Thor turned about, and waited for them.
Half a mile to the south, looking through his glasses, Langdon saw Thor, and at almost the same instant the dogs appeared over the edge of the coulee. He had ridden halfway up the mountain; from that point he had climbed higher, and was following a well-beaten sheep trail at about the same altitude as Thor. From where he stood the valley lay under his glasses for miles. He did not have far to look to discover Bruce and the Indian. They were dismounting at the foot of the coulee, and as he gazed they ran quickly into it and disappeared.
Again Langdon swung back to Thor. The dogs were holding him now, and he knew there was no chance of the grizzly killing them in that open space. Then he saw movement among the rocks higher up, and a low cry of understanding broke from his lips as he made out Iskwao climbing steadily toward the ragged peak. He knew that this second bear was a female. The big grizzly—her mate—had stopped to fight. And there was no hope for him if the dogs succeeded in holding him for a matter of ten or fifteen minutes. Bruce and Metoosin would appear in that time over the rim of the coulee at a range of less than a hundred yards!
Langdon thrust his binoculars in their case and started at a run along the sheep trail. For two hundred yards his progress was easy, and then the patch broke into a thousand individual tracks on a slope of soft and slippery shale, and it took him five minutes to make the next fifty yards.
The trail hardened again. He ran on pantingly, and for another five minutes the shoulder of a ridge hid Thor and the dogs from him. When he came over that ridge and ran fifty yards, down the farther side of it, he stopped short. Further progress was barred by a steep ravine. He was five hundred yards from where Thor stood with his back to the rocks and his huge head to the pack.
Even as he looked, struggling to get breath enough to shout, Langdon expected to see Bruce and Metoosin appear out of the coulee. It flashed upon him then that even if he could make them hear it would be impossible for them to understand him. Bruce would not guess that he wanted to spare the beast they had been hunting for almost two weeks.
Thor had rushed the dogs a full twenty yards toward the coulee when Langdon dropped quickly behind a rock. There was only one way of saving him now, if he was not too late. The pack had retreated a few yards down the slope, and he aimed at the pack. One thought only filled his brain—he must sacrifice his dogs or let Thor die. And that day Thor had given him his life!
There was no hesitation as he pressed the trigger. It was a long shot, and the first bullet threw up a cloud of dust fifty feet short of the Airedales. He fired again, and missed. The third time his rifle cracked there answered it a sharp yelp of pain which Laagdon himself did not hear. One of the dogs rolled over and over down the slope.
The reports of the shots alone had not stirred Thor, but now when he saw one of his enemies crumple up and go rolling down the mountain he turned slowly toward the safety of the rocks. A fourth and then a fifth shot followed, and at the fifth the yelping dogs dropped back toward the coulee, one of them limping with a shattered fore-foot.
Langdon sprang upon the boulder over which he had rested his gun, and his eyes caught the sky-line. Iskwao had just reached the top. She paused for a moment and looked down. Then she disappeared.
Thor was now hidden among the boulders and broken masses of sandstone, following her trail. Within two minutes after the grizzly disappeared Bruce and Metoosin scrambled up over the edge of the coulee. From where they stood even the sky-line was within fairly good shooting distance, and Langdon suddenly began shouting excitedly, waving his arms, and pointing downward.
Bruce and Metoosin were caught by his ruse, in spite of the fact that the dogs were again giving fierce tongue close to the rocks among which Thor had gone. They believed that from where he stood Langdon could see the progress of the bear, and that it was running toward the valley. Not until they were another hundred yards down the slope did they stop and look back at Langdon to get further directions. From his rock Langdon was pointing to the sky-line.
Thor was just going over. He paused for a moment, as Iskwao had stopped, and took one last look at man.
And Langdon, as he saw the last of him, waved his hat and shouted, "Good luck to you, old man—good luck!"
That night Langdon and Bruce made their new plans, while Metoosin sat aloof, smoking in stolid silence, and gazing now and then at Langdon as if he could not yet bring himself to the point of believing what had happened that afternoon. Thereafter through many moons Metoosin would never forget to relate to his children and his grandchildren and his friends of the tepee tribes how he had once hunted with a white man who had shot his own dogs to save the life of a grizzly bear. Langdon was no longer the same old Langdon to him, and after this hunt Metoosin knew that he would never hunt with him again. For Langdon waskeskwaonow. Something had gone wrong in his head. The Great Spirit had taken away his heart and had given it to a grizzly bear, and over his pipe Metoosin watched him cautiously. This suspicion was confirmed when he saw Bruce and Langdon making a cage out of a cowhide pannier and realized that the cub was to accompany them on their long journey. There was no doubt in his mind now. Langdon was "queer," and to an Indian that sort of queerness boded no good to man.
The next morning at sunrise the outfit was ready for its long trail into the northland. Bruce and Langdon led the way up the slope and over the divide into the valley where they had first encountered Thor, the train filing picturesquely behind them, with Metoosin bringing up the rear. In his cowhide pannier rode Muskwa.
Langdon was satisfied and happy.
"It was the best hunt of my life," he said to Bruce. "I'll never be sorry we let him live."
"You're the doctor," said Bruce rather irreverently. "If I had my way about it his hide would be back there on Dishpan. Almost any tourist down on the line of rail would jump for it at a hundred dollars."
"He's worth several thousand to me alive," replied Langdon, with which enigmatic retort he dropped behind to see how Muskwa was riding.
The cub was rolling and pitching about in his pannier like a raw amateur in a howdab on an elephant's back, and after contemplating him for a few moments Langdon caught up with Bruce again.
Half a dozen times during the next two or three hours he visited Muskwa, and each time that he returned to Bruce he was quieter, as if debating something with himself.
It was nine o'clock when they came to what was undoubtedly the end of Thor's valley. A mountain rose up squarely in the face of it, and the stream they were following swung sharply to the westward into a narrow canyon. On the east rose a green and undulating slope up which the horses could easily travel, and which would take the outfit into a new valley in the direction of the Driftwood. This course Bruce decided to pursue.
Halfway up the slope they stopped to give the horses a breathing spell. In his cowhide prison Muskwa whimpered pleadingly. Langdon heard, but he seemed to pay no attention. He was looking steadily back into the valley. It was glorious in the morning sun. He could see the peaks under which lay the cool, dark lake in which Thor had fished; for miles the slopes were like green velvet and there came to him as he looked the last droning music of Thor's world. It struck him in a curious way as a sort of anthem, a hymnal rejoicing that he was going, and that he was leaving things as they were before he came. And yet,washe leaving things as they had been? Did his ears not catch in that music of the mountains something of sadness, of grief, of plaintive prayer?
And again, close to him, Muskwa whimpered softly.
Then Langdon turned to Bruce.
"It's settled," he said, and his words had a decisive ring in them. "I've been trying to make up my mind all the morning, and it's made up now. You and Metoosin go on when the horses get their wind. I'm going to ride down there a mile or so and free the cub where he'll find his way back home!"
He did not wait for arguments or remarks, and Bruce made none. He took Muskwa in his arms and rode back into the south.
A mile up the valley Langdon came to a wide, open meadow dotted with clumps of spruce and willows and sweet with the perfume of flowers. Here he dismounted, and for ten minutes sat on the ground with Muskwa. From his pocket he drew forth a small paper bag and fed the cub its last sugar. A thick lump grew in his throat as Muskwa's soft little nose muzzled the palm of his hand, and when at last he jumped up and sprang into his saddle there was a mist in his eyes. He tried to laugh. Perhaps he was weak. But he loved Muskwa, and he knew that he was leaving more than a human friend in this mountain valley.
"Good-bye, old fellow," he said, and his voice was choking. "Good-bye, little Spitfire! Mebby some day I'll come back and see you, and you'll be a big, fierce bear—but I won't shoot—never—never—"
He rode fast into the north. Three hundred yards away he turned his head and looked back. Muskwa was following, but losing ground. Langdon waved his hand.
"Good-bye!" he called through the lump in his throat. "Good-bye!"
Half an hour later he looked down from the top of the slope through his glasses. He saw Muskwa, a black dot. The cub had stopped, and was waiting confidently for him to return.
And trying to laugh again, but failing dismally, Langdon rode over the divide and out of Muskwa's life.
For a good half-mile Muskwa followed over the trail of Langdon. He ran at first; then he walked; finally he stopped entirely and sat down like a dog, facing the distant slope. Had Langdon been afoot he would not have halted until he was tired. But the cub had not liked his pannier prison. He had been tremendously jostled and bounced about, and twice the horse that carried him had shaken himself, and those shakings had been like earthquakes to Muskwa. He knew that the cage as well as Langdon was ahead of him. He sat for a time and whimpered wistfully, but he went no farther. He was sure that the friend he had grown to love would return after a little. He always came back. He had never failed him. So he began to hunt about for a spring beauty or a dog-tooth violet, and for some time he was careful not to stray very far away from where the outfit had passed.
All that day the cub remained in the flower-strewn meadows under the slope; it was very pleasant in the sunshine, and he found more than one patch of the bulbous roots he liked. He dug, and he filled himself, and he took a nap in the afternoon; but when the sun began to go down and the heavy shadows of the mountain darkened the valley he began to grow afraid.
He was still a very small baby of a cub, and only that one dreadful night after his mother had died had he spent entirely alone. Thor had replaced mother, and Langdon had taken the place of Thor, so that until now he had never felt the loneliness and emptiness of darkness. He crawled under a clump of thorn close to the trail, and continued to wait, and listen, and sniff expectantly. The stars came out clear and brilliant, but to-night their lure was not strong enough to call him forth. Not until dawn did he steal out cautiously from his shelter of thorn.
The sun gave him courage and confidence again and he began wandering back through the valley, the scent of the horse-trail growing fainter and fainter until at last it disappeared entirely. That day Muskwa ate some grass and a few dog-tooth violet roots, and when the second night came he was abreast of the slope over which the outfit had come from the valley in which were Thor and Iskwao. He was tired and hungry, and he was utterly lost.
That night he slept in the end of a hollow log. The next day he went on, and for many days and many nights after that he was alone in the big valley. He passed close to the pool where Thor and he had met the old bear, and he nosed hungrily among the fishbones; he skirted the edge of the dark, deep lake; he saw the shadowy things fluttering in the gloom of the forest again; he passed over the beaver dam, and he slept for two nights close to the log-jam from which he had watched Thor throw out their first fish. He was almost forgetting Langdon now, and was thinking more and more about Thor and his mother. He wanted them. He wanted them more than he had ever wanted the companionship of man, for Muskwa was fast becoming a creature of the wild again.
It was the beginning of August before the cub came to the break in the valley and climbed up the slope where Thor had first heard the thunder and had first felt the sting of the white men's guns. In these two weeks Muskwa had grown rapidly, in spite of the fact that he often went to bed on an empty stomach; and he was no longer afraid of the dark. Through the deep, sunless canyon above the clay wallow he went, and as there was only one way out he came at last to the summit of the break over which Thor had gone, and over which Langdon and Bruce had followed in close pursuit. And the other valley—his home—lay under Muskwa.
Of course he did not recognize it. He saw and smelled in it nothing that was familiar. But it was such a beautiful valley, and so abundantly filled with plenty and sunshine, that he did not hurry through it. He found whole gardens of spring beauties and dog-tooth violets. And on the third day he made his first real kill. He almost stumbled over a baby whistler no larger than a red squirrel, and before the little creature could escape he was upon it. It made him a splendid feast.
It was fully a week before he passed along the creek-bottom close under the slope where his mother had died. If he had been travelling along the crest of the slope he would have found her bones, picked clean by the wild things. It was another week before he came to the little meadow where Thor had killed the bull caribou and the big black bear.
And now Muskwa knew that he was home!
For two days he did not travel two hundred yards from the scene of feast and battle, and night and day he was on the watch for Thor. Then he had to seek farther for food, but each afternoon when the mountains began to throw out long shadows he would return to the clump of trees in which they had made the cache that the black bear robber had despoiled.
One day he went farther than usual in his quest for roots. He was a good half-mile from the place he had made home, and he was sniffing about the end of a rock when a great shadow fell suddenly upon him. He looked up, and for a full half-minute he stood transfixed, his heart pounding and jumping as it had never pounded and jumped before in his life. Within five feet of him stood Thor! The big grizzly was as motionless as he, looking at him steadily. And then Muskwa gave a puppy-like whine of joy and ran forward. Thor lowered his huge head, and for another half-minute they stood without moving, with Thor's nose buried in the hair on Muskwa's back. After that Thor went up the slope as if the cub had never been lost at all, and Muskwa followed him happily.
Many days of wonderful travel and of glorious feasting came after this, and Thor led Muskwa into a thousand new places in the two valleys and the mountains between. There were great fishing days, and there was another caribou killed over the range, and Muskwa grew fatter and fatter and heavier and heavier until by the middle of September he was as large as a good-sized dog.
Then came the berries, and Thor knew where they all grew low down in the valleys—first the wild red raspberries, then the soap berries, and after those the delicious black currants which grew in the cool depths of the forests and were almost as large as cherries and nearly as sweet as the sugar which Langdon had fed Muskwa. Muskwa liked the black currants best of all. They grew in thick, rich clusters; there were no leaves on the bushes that were loaded with them, and he could pick and eat a quart in five minutes.
But at last the time came when there were no berries. This was in October. The nights were very cold, and for whole days at a time the sun would not shine, and the skies were dark and heavy with clouds. On the peaks the snow was growing deeper and deeper, and it never thawed now up near the sky-line. Snow fell in the valley, too—at first just enough to make a white carpet that chilled Muskwa's feet, but it quickly disappeared. Raw winds began to come out of the north, and in place of the droning music of the valley in summertime there were now shrill wailings and screechings at night, and the trees made mournful sounds.
To Muskwa the whole world seemed changing. He wondered in these chill and dark days why Thor kept to the windswept slopes when he might have found shelter in the bottoms. And Thor, if he explained to him at all, told him that winter was very near, and that these slopes were their last feeding grounds. In the valleys the berries were gone; grass and roots alone were no longer nourishing enough for their bodies; they could no longer waste time in seeking ants and grubs; the fish were in deep water. It was the season when the caribou were keen-scented as foxes and swift as the wind. Only along the slopes lay the dinners they were sure of—famine-day dinners of whistlers and gophers. Thor dug for them now, and in this digging Muskwa helped as much as he could. More than once they turned out wagonloads of earth to get at the cozy winter sleeping quarters of a whistler family, and sometimes they dug for hours to capture three or four little gophers no larger than red squirrels, but lusciously fat.
Thus they lived through the last days of October into November. And now the snow and the cold winds and the fierce blizzards from the north came in earnest, and the ponds and lakes began to freeze over. Still Thor hung to the slopes, and Muskwa shivered with the cold at night and wondered if the sun was never going to shine again.
One day about the middle of November Thor stopped in the very act of digging out a family of whistlers, went straight down into the valley, and struck southward in a most businesslike way. They were ten miles from the clay-wallow canyon when they started, but so lively was the pace set by the big grizzly that they reached it before dark that same afternoon.
For two days after this Thor seemed to have no object in life at all. There was nothing in the canyon to eat, and he wandered about among the rocks, smelling and listening and deporting himself generally in a fashion that was altogether mystifying to Muskwa. In the afternoon of the second day Thor stopped in a dump of jackpines under which the ground was strewn with fallen needles. He began to eat these needles. They did not look good to Muskwa, but something told the cub that he should do as Thor was doing; so he licked them up and swallowed them, not knowing that it was nature's last preparation for his long sleep.