he first rose-flush of the sun he was
ready for the trail of Neewa and his mother. Miki set up a melancholy
wailing when he found himself left behind, and when Challoner looked
back the pup was tugging and somersaulting at the end of his rope like
a jumping-jack. For a quarter of a mile up the creek he could hear
Miki's entreating protest.

To Challoner the business of the day was not a matter of personal
pleasure, nor was it inspired alone by his desire to possess a cub
along with Miki. He needed meat, and bear pork thus early in the season
would be exceedingly good; and above all else he needed a supply of
fat. If he bagged this bear, time would be saved all the rest of the
way down to civilization.

It was eight o'clock when he struck the first unmistakably fresh signs
of Noozak and Neewa. It was at the point where Noozak had fished four
or five days previously, and where they had returned yesterday to feast
on the "ripened" catch. Challoner was elated. He was sure that he would
find the pair along the creek, and not far distant. The wind was in his
favour, and he began to advance with greater caution, his rifle ready
for the anticipated moment. For an hour he travelled steadily and
quietly, marking every sound and movement ahead of him, and wetting his
finger now and then to see if the wind had shifted. After all, it was
not so much a matter of human cunning. Everything was in Challoner's
favour.

In a wide, flat part of the valley where the creek split itself into a
dozen little channels, and the water rippled between sandy bars and
over pebbly shallows, Neewa and his mother were nosing about lazily for
a breakfast of crawfish. The world had never looked more beautiful to
Neewa. The sun made the soft hair on his back fluff up like that of a
purring cat. He liked the plash of wet sand under his feet and the
singing gush of water against his legs. He liked the sound that was all
about him, the breath of the wind, the whispers that came out of the
spruce-tops and the cedars, the murmur of water, the TWIT-TWIT of the
rock rabbits, the call of birds; and more than all else the low,
grunting talk of his mother.

It was in this sun-bathed sweep of the valley that Noozak caught the
first whiff of danger. It came to her in a sudden twist of the
wind--the smell of man!

Instantly she was turned into rock. There was still the deep scar in
her shoulder which had come, years before, with that same smell of the
one enemy