eying, but he was a game
youngster, and only twice did he whimper in that half-hour--once he toppled
off a rock into the edge of the creek, and again when he came down too hard
on the porcupine quill in his foot.

At last Thor abandoned the creek and turned up a deep ravine, which he
followed until he came to a dip, or plateau-like plain, halfway up a broad
slope. Here he found a rock on the sunny side of a grassy knoll, and
stopped. It may be that little Muskwa's babyish friendship, the caress of
his soft little red tongue at just the psychological moment, and his
perseverance in following Thor had all combined to touch a responsive chord
in the other's big brute heart, for after nosing about restlessly for a few
moments Thor stretched himself out beside the rock. Not until then did the
utterly exhausted little tan-faced cub lie down, but when he did lie down
he was so dead tired that he was sound asleep in three minutes.

Twice again during the early part of the afternoon the _sapoos oowin_
worked on Thor, and he began to feel hungry. It was not the sort of hunger
to be appeased by ants and grubs, or even gophers and whistlers. It may be,
too, that he guessed how nearly starved little Muskwa was. The cub had not
once opened his eyes, and he still lay in his warm pool of sunshine when
Thor made up his mind to go on.

It was about three o'clock, a particularly quiet and drowsy part of a late
June or early July day in a northern mountain valley. The whistlers had
piped until they were tired, and lay squat out in the sunshine on their
rocks; the eagles soared so high above the peaks that they were mere dots;
the hawks, with meat-filled crops, had disappeared into the timber; goat
and sheep were lying down far up toward the sky-line, and if there were any
grazing animals near they were well fed and napping.

The mountain hunter knew that this was the hour when he should scan the
green slopes and the open places between the clumps of timber for bears,
and especially for flesh-eating bears.

It was Thor's chief prospecting hour. Instinct told him that when all
other creatures were well fed and napping he could move more openly and
with less fear of detection. He could find his game, and watch it.
Occasionally he would kill a goat or a sheep or a caribou in broad
daylight, for over short distances he could run faster than either a goat
or a sheep, and as fast as a caribou. But chiefly he killed at sunset or in
the darknes