And down in the meadow Muskwa ran to Thor with a bit of warm black hide in his mouth, and Thor lowered his great bleeding head, and just once his red tongue shot out and caressed Muskwa’s face.  For the little tan-faced cub had proved himself; and it may be that Thor had seen and understood.

CHAPTER NINE

Neither Thor nor Muskwa went near the caribou meat after the big fight.  Thor was in no condition to eat, and Muskwa was so filled with excitement and trembling that he could not swallow a mouthful.  He continued to worry a strip of black hide, snarling and growling in his puny way, as though finishing what the other had begun.

For many minutes the grizzly stood with his big head drooping, and the blood gathered in splashes under him.  He was facing down the valley.  There was almost no wind—­so little that it was scarcely possible to tell from which direction it came.  Eddies of it were caught in the coulees, and higher up about the shoulders and peaks it blew stronger.  Now and then one of these higher movements of air would sweep gently downward and flow through the valley for a few moments in a great noiseless breath that barely stirred the tops of the balsams and spruce.

One of these mountain-breaths came as Thor faced the east.  And with it, faint and terrible, came the man-smell!

Thor roused himself with a sudden growl from the lethargy into which he had momentarily allowed himself to sink.  His relaxed muscles hardened.  He raised his head and sniffed the wind.

Muskwa ceased his futile fight with the bit of hide and also sniffed the air.  It was warm with the man-scent, for Langdon and Bruce were running and sweating, and the odour of man-sweat drifts heavy and far.  It filled Thor with a fresh rage.  For a second time it came when he was hurt and bleeding.  He had already associated the man-smell with hurt, and now it was doubly impressed upon him.  He turned his head and snarled at the mutilated body of the big black.  Then he snarled menacingly in the face of the wind.  He was in no humour to run away.  In these moments, if Bruce and Langdon had appeared over the rise, Thor would have charged with that deadly ferocity which lead can scarcely stop, and which has given to his kind their terrible name.

But the breath of air passed, and there followed a peaceful calm.  The valley was filled with the purr of running water; from their rocks the whistlers called forth their soft notes; up on the green plain the ptarmigan were fluting, and rising in white-winged flocks.  These things soothed Thor, as a woman’s gentle hand quiets an angry man.  For five minutes he continued to rumble and growl as he tried vainly to catch the scent again; but the rumbling and growling grew steadily less, and finally he turned and walked slowly toward the coulee down which he and Muskwa had come a little while before.  Muskwa followed.