When no more than the length of a yardstick separated them there came a pause.  For perhaps thirty seconds they were like two angry men, each trying to strike terror to the other’s heart by the steadiness of his look.

Muskwa shook as if with the ague, and whined—­softly and steadily he whined, and the whine reached Thor’s ears.  What happened after that began so quickly that Muskwa was struck dumb with terror, and he lay flattened out on the earth as motionless as a stone.

With that grinding, snarling grizzly roar, which is unlike any other animal cry in the world, Thor flung himself at the black.  The black reared a little—­just enough to fling himself backward easily as they came together breast to breast.  He rolled upon his back, but Thor was too old a fighter to be caught by that first vicious ripping stroke of the black’s hind foot, and he buried his four long flesh-rending teeth to the bone of his enemy’s shoulder.  At the same time he struck a terrific cutting stroke with his left paw.

Thor was a digger, and his claws were dulled; the black was not a digger, but a tree-climber, and his claws were like knives.  And like knives they buried themselves in Thor’s wounded shoulder, and the blood spurted forth afresh.

With a roar that seemed to set the earth trembling, the huge grizzly lunged backward and reared himself to his full nine feet.  He had given the black warning.  Even after their first tussle his enemy might have retreated and he would not have pursued.  Now it was a fight to the death!  The black had done more than ravage his cache.  He had opened the man-wound!

A minute before Thor had been fighting for law and right—­without great animosity or serious desire to kill.  Now, however, he was terrible.  His mouth was open, and it was eight inches from jaw to jaw; his lips were drawn up until his white teeth and his red gums were bared; muscles stood out like cords on his nostrils, and between his eyes was a furrow like the cleft made by an axe in the trunk of a pine.  His eyes shone with the glare of red garnets, their greenish-black pupils almost obliterated by the ferocious fire that was in them.  Man, facing Thor in this moment, would have known that only one would come out alive.

Thor was not a “stand-up” fighter.  For perhaps six or seven seconds he remained erect, but as the black advanced a step he dropped quickly to all fours.

The black met him halfway, and after this—­for many minutes—­Muskwa hugged closer and closer to the earth while with gleaming eyes he watched the battle.  It was such a fight as only the jungles and the mountains see, and the roar of it drifted up and down the valley.

Like human creatures the two giant beasts used their powerful forearms while with fangs and hind feet they ripped and tore.  For two minutes they were in a close and deadly embrace, both rolling on the ground, now one under and then the other.  The black clawed ferociously; Thor used chiefly his teeth and his terrible right hind foot.  With his forearms he made no effort to rend the black, but used them to hold and throw his enemy.  He was fighting to get under, as he had flung himself under the caribou he had disembowelled.