Langdon was silent.  After a moment he said:  “And I’m beginning to love them, Bruce.  I don’t know just why, but there’s something about bears that makes you love them.  I’m not going to shoot many more—­perhaps none after we get this dog-killer we’re after.  I almost believe he will be my last bear.”  Suddenly he clenched his hands, and added angrily:  “And to think there isn’t a province in the Dominion or a state south of the Border that has a ‘closed season’ for bear!  It’s an outrage, Bruce.  They’re classed with vermin, and can be exterminated at all seasons.  They can even be dug out of their dens with their young—­and—­so help me Heaven!—­I’ve helped to dig them out!  We’re beasts, Bruce.  Sometimes I almost think it’s a crime for a man to carry a gun.  And yet—­I go on killing.”

“It’s in our blood,” laughed Bruce, unmoved.  “Did you ever know a man, Jimmy, that didn’t like to see things die?  Wouldn’t every mother’s soul of ’em go to a hanging if they had the chance?  Won’t they crowd like buzzards round a dead horse to get a look at a man crushed to a pulp under a rock or a locomotive engine?  Why, Jimmie, if there weren’t no law to be afraid of, we humans’d be killing one another for the fun of it!  We would.  It’s born in us to want to kill.”

“And we take it all out on brute creation,” mused Langdon.  “After all, we can’t have much sympathy for ourselves if a generation or two of us are killed in war, can we?  Mebby you’re right, Bruce.  Inasmuch as we can’t kill our neighbours legally whenever we have the inclination, it’s possible the Chief Arbiter of things sends us a war now and then to relieve us temporarily of our blood-thirstiness.  Hello, what in thunder is the cub up to now?”

Muskwa had fallen the wrong way out of his crotch and was dangling like the victim at the end of a hangman’s rope.  Langdon ran to him, caught him boldly in his bare hands, lifted him up over the limb and placed him on the ground.  Muskwa did not snap at him or even growl.

Bruce and Metoosin were away from camp all of that day, spying over the range to the westward, and Langdon was left to doctor a knee which he had battered against a rock the previous day.  He spent most of his time in company with Muskwa.  He opened a can of their griddle-cake syrup and by noon he had the cub following him about the tree and straining to reach the dish which he held temptingly just out of reach.  Then he would sit down, and Muskwa would climb half over his lap to reach the syrup.

At his present age Muskwa’s affection and confidence were easily won.  A baby black bear is very much like a human baby:  he likes milk, he loves sweet things, and he wants to cuddle up close to any living thing that is good to him.  He is the most lovable creature on four legs—­round and soft and fluffy, and so funny that he is sure to keep every one about him in good humour.  More than once that day Langdon laughed until the tears came, and especially when Muskwa made determined efforts to climb up his leg to reach the dish of syrup.