Twenty feet on the other side was a sheer fall
of a hundred feet, and the way ahead was closed with the exception of a
trail scarcely wider than Thor's body by a huge crag of rock that had
fallen from the shoulder of the mountain. The big grizzly led Muskwa close
up to this crag and the break that opened through it, and then turned
suddenly back, so that Muskwa was behind him. In the face of the peril that
was almost upon them a mother-bear would have driven Muskwa into the safety
of a crevice in the rock wall. Thor did not do this. He fronted the danger
that was coming, and reared himself up on his hind quarters.

Twenty feet away the trail he had followed swung sharply around a
projecting bulge in the perpendicular wall, and with eyes that were now
red and terrible Thor watched the trap he had set.

The pack was coming full tongue. Fifty yards beyond the bulge the dogs were
running shoulder to shoulder, and a moment later the first of them rushed
into the arena which Thor had chosen for himself. The bulk of the horde
followed so closely that the first dogs were flung under him as they strove
frantically to stop themselves in time.

With a roar Thor launched himself among them. His great right arm swept out
and inward, and it seemed to Muskwa that he had gathered a half of the pack
under his huge body. With a single crunch of his jaws he broke the back of
the foremost hunter. From a second he tore the head so that the windpipe
trailed out like a red rope.

He rolled himself forward, and before the remaining dogs could recover from
their panic he had caught one a blow that sent him flying over the edge of
the precipice to the rocks a hundred feet below. It had all happened in
half a minute, and in that half-minute the remaining nine dogs had
scattered.

But Langdon's Airedales were fighters. To the last dog they had come of
fighting stock, and Bruce and Metoosin had trained them until they could be
hung up by their ears without whimpering. The tragic fate of three of their
number frightened them no more than their own pursuit had frightened Thor.

Swift as lightning they circled about the grizzly, spreading themselves on
their forefeet, ready to spring aside or backward to avoid sudden rushes,
and giving voice now to that quick, fierce yapping which tells hunters
their quarry is at bay. This was their business--to harass and torment, to
retard flight, to stop their prey again and again until their masters came
to f