their jaws met in midair. Muskwa
heard the clash of them; he heard the grind of teeth on teeth, the
sickening crunch of bone.

Then suddenly the black was flung upon his side as though his neck had been
broken, and Thor was at his throat. Still the black fought, his gaping and
bleeding jaws powerless now as the grizzly closed his own huge jaws on the
jugular.

Muskwa stood up. He was shivering still, but with a new and strange
emotion. This was not play, as he and his mother had played. For the first
time he was looking upon _battle_, and the thrill of it sent the blood hot
and fast through his little body. With a faint, puppyish snarl he darted
in. His teeth sank futilely into the thick hair and tough hide of the
black's rump. He pulled and he snarled; he braced himself with his forefeet
and tugged at his mouthful of hair, filled with a blind and unaccountable
rage.

The black twisted himself upon his back, and one of his hind feet raked
Thor from chest to vent. That stroke would have disembowelled a caribou or
a deer; it left a red, open, bleeding wound three feet long on Thor.

Before it could be repeated, the grizzly swung himself sidewise, and the
second blow caught Muskwa. The flat of the black's foot struck him, and for
twenty feet he was sent like a stone out of a sling-shot. He was not cut,
but he was stunned.

In that same moment Thor released his hold on his enemy's throat, and
swung two or three feet to one side. He was dripping blood. The black's
shoulders, chest, and neck were saturated with it; huge chunks had been
torn from his body. He made an effort to rise, and Thor was on him again.

This time Thor got his deadliest of all holds. His great jaws clamped in a
death-grip over the upper part of the black's nose. One terrific grinding
crunch, and the fight was over. The black could not have lived after that.
But this fact Thor did not know. It was now easy for him to rip with those
knifelike claws on his hind feet. He continued to maul and tear for ten
minutes after the black was dead.

When Thor finally quit the scene of battle was terrible to look upon. The
ground was torn up and red; it was covered with great strips of black hide
and pieces of flesh; and the black, on the under side, was torn open from
end to end.

Two miles away, tense and white and scarcely breathing as they looked
through their glasses, Langdon and Bruce crouched beside a rock on the
mountainside. At that distance they had