In the edge of the balsams Thor had already found a hollow in the ground.  He thrust the carcass into this hollow, and while Muskwa watched with a great and growing interest, he proceeded to cover it over with dry needles, sticks, a rotting tree butt, and a log.  He did not rear himself up and leave his “mark” on a tree as a warning to other bears.  He simply nosed round for a bit, and then went out of the timber.

Muskwa followed him now, and he had some trouble in properly navigating himself under the handicap of his added weight.  The stars were beginning to fill the sky, and under these stars Thor struck straight up a steep and rugged slope that led to the mountain-tops.  Up and up he went, higher than Muskwa had ever been.  They crossed a patch of snow.  And then they came to a place where it seemed as if a volcano had disrupted the bowels of a mountain.  Man could hardly have travelled where Thor led Muskwa.

At last he stopped.  He was on a narrow ledge, with a perpendicular wall of rock at his back.  Under him fell away the chaos of torn-up rock and shale.  Far below the valley lay a black and bottomless pit.

Thor lay down, and for the first time since his hurt in the other valley he stretched out his head between his great arms, and heaved a deep and restful sigh.  Muskwa crept up close to him, so close that he was warmed by Thor’s body; and together they slept the deep and peaceful sleep of full stomachs, while over them the stars grew brighter, and the moon came up to flood the peaks and the valley in a golden splendour.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Langdon and Bruce crossed the summit into the westward valley in the afternoon of the day Thor left the clay wallow.  It was two o’clock when Bruce turned back for the three horses, leaving Langdon on a high ridge to scour the surrounding country through his glasses.  For two hours after the packer returned with the outfit they followed slowly along the creek above which the grizzly had travelled, and when they camped for the night they were still two or three miles from the spot where Thor came upon Muskwa.  They had not yet found his tracks in the sand of the creek bottom.  Yet Bruce was confident.  He knew that Thor had been following the crests of the slopes.

“If you go back out of this country an’ write about bears, don’t make a fool o’ yo’rself like most of the writin’ fellows, Jimmy,” he said, as they sat back to smoke their pipes after supper.  “Two years ago I took a natcherlist out for a month, an’ he was so tickled he said ’e’d send me a bunch o’ books about bears an’ wild things.  He did!  I read ’em.  I laughed at first, an’ then I got mad an’ made a fire of ’em.  Bears is cur’ous.  There’s a mighty lot of interestin’ things to say about ’em without making a fool o’ yo’rself.  There sure is!”

Langdon nodded.