While Otto saddled the horses Langdon made the bannock.  He had become an expert at what he called “wild-bread” baking, and his method possessed the double efficiency of saving both waste and time.

He opened one of the heavy canvas flour sacks, made a hollow in the flour with his two doubled fists, partly filled this hollow with a pint of water and half a cupful of caribou grease, added a tablespoonful of baking powder and a three-finger pinch of salt, and began to mix.  Inside of five minutes he had the bannock loaves in the big tin reflector, and half an hour later the sheep steaks were fried, the potatoes done, and the bannock baked to a golden brown.

The sun was just showing its face in the east when they trailed out of camp.  They rode across the valley, but walked up the slope, the horses following obediently in their footsteps.

It was not difficult to pick up Thor’s trail.  Where he had paused to snarl back defiance at his enemies there was a big red spatter on the ground; from this point to the summit they followed a crimson thread of blood.  Three times in descending into the other valley they found where Thor had stopped, and each time they saw where a pool of blood had soaked into the earth or run over the rock.

They passed through the timber and came to the creek, and here, in a strip of firm black sand, Thor’s footprints brought them to a pause.  Bruce stared.  An exclamation of amazement came from Langdon, and without a word having passed between them he drew out his pocket-tape and knelt beside one of the tracks.

“Fifteen and a quarter inches!” he gasped.

“Measure another,” said Bruce.

“Fifteen and—­a half!”

Bruce looked up the gorge.

“The biggest I ever see was fourteen an’ a half,” he said, and there was a touch of awe in his voice.  “He was shot up the Athabasca an’ he’s stood as the biggest grizzly ever killed in British Columbia.  Jimmy, this one beats ’im!”

They went on, and measured the tracks again at the edge of the first pool where Thor had bathed his wounds.  There was almost no variation in the measurements.  Only occasionally after this did they find spots of blood.  It was ten o’clock when they came to the clay wallow and saw where Thor had made his bed in it.

“He was pretty sick,” said Bruce in a low voice.  “He was here most all night.”

Moved by the same impulse and the same thought, they looked ahead of them.  Half a mile farther on the mountains closed in until the gorge between them was dark and sunless.

“He was pretty sick,” repeated Bruce, still looking ahead.  “Mebbe we’d better tie the horses an’ go on alone.  It’s possible—­he’s in there.”

They tied the horses to scrub cedars, and relieved Dishpan of her pack.

Then, with their rifles in readiness, and eyes and ears alert, they went on cautiously into the silence and gloom of the gorge.