of the valley.

But Thor was giving no thought to the hunt this morning. Twice he
encountered porcupines, the sweetest of all morsels to him, and passed them
unnoticed; the warm, _sleeping_ smell of a caribou came hot and fresh from
a thicket, but he did not approach the thicket to investigate; out of a
coulee, narrow and dark, like a black ditch, he caught the scent of a
badger. For two hours he travelled steadily northward along the half-crest
of the slopes before he struck down through the timber to the stream.

The clay adhering to his wound was beginning to harden, and again he waded
shoulder-deep into a pool, and stood there for several minutes. The water
washed most of the clay away. For another two hours he followed the creek,
drinking frequently. Then came the _sapoos oowin_--six hours after he had
left the clay wallow. The kinnikinic berries, the soap berries, the
jackpine pitch, the spruce and balsam needles, and the water he had drunk,
all mixed in his stomach in one big compelling dose, brought it about--and
Thor felt tremendously better, so much better that for the first time he
turned and growled back in the direction of his enemies. His shoulder still
hurt him, but his sickness was gone.

For many minutes after the _sapoos oowin_ he stood without moving, and many
times he growled. The snarling rumble deep in his chest had a new meaning
now. Until last night and to-day he had not known a real hatred. He had
fought other bears, but the fighting rage was not hate. It came quickly,
and passed away quickly; it left no growing ugliness; he licked the wounds
of a clawed enemy, and was quite frequently happy while he nursed them. But
this new thing that was born in him was different.

With an unforgetable and ferocious hatred he hated the thing that had hurt
him. He hated the man-smell; he hated the strange, white-faced thing he had
seen clinging to the side of the gorge; and his hatred included everything
associated with them. It was a hatred born of instinct and roused sharply
from its long slumber by experience.

Without ever having seen or smelled man before, he knew that man was his
deadliest enemy, and to be feared more than all the wild things in the
mountains. He would fight the biggest grizzly. He would turn on the
fiercest pack of wolves. He would brave flood and fire without flinching.
But before man he must flee! He must hide! He must constantly guard himself
in the peaks and on the plains with e