The next morning at sunrise the outfit was ready for its long trail into the northland.  Bruce and Langdon led the way up the slope and over the divide into the valley where they had first encountered Thor, the train filing picturesquely behind them, with Metoosin bringing up the rear.  In his cowhide pannier rode Muskwa.

Langdon was satisfied and happy.

“It was the best hunt of my life,” he said to Bruce.  “I’ll never be sorry we let him live.”

“You’re the doctor,” said Bruce rather irreverently.  “If I had my way about it his hide would be back there on Dishpan.  Almost any tourist down on the line of rail would jump for it at a hundred dollars.”

“He’s worth several thousand to me alive,” replied Langdon, with which enigmatic retort he dropped behind to see how Muskwa was riding.

The cub was rolling and pitching about in his pannier like a raw amateur in a howdab on an elephant’s back, and after contemplating him for a few moments Langdon caught up with Bruce again.

Half a dozen times during the next two or three hours he visited Muskwa, and each time that he returned to Bruce he was quieter, as if debating something with himself.

It was nine o’clock when they came to what was undoubtedly the end of Thor’s valley.  A mountain rose up squarely in the face of it, and the stream they were following swung sharply to the westward into a narrow canyon.  On the east rose a green and undulating slope up which the horses could easily travel, and which would take the outfit into a new valley in the direction of the Driftwood.  This course Bruce decided to pursue.

Halfway up the slope they stopped to give the horses a breathing spell.  In his cowhide prison Muskwa whimpered pleadingly.  Langdon heard, but he seemed to pay no attention.  He was looking steadily back into the valley.  It was glorious in the morning sun.  He could see the peaks under which lay the cool, dark lake in which Thor had fished; for miles the slopes were like green velvet and there came to him as he looked the last droning music of Thor’s world.  It struck him in a curious way as a sort of anthem, a hymnal rejoicing that he was going, and that he was leaving things as they were before he came.  And yet, was he leaving things as they had been?  Did his ears not catch in that music of the mountains something of sadness, of grief, of plaintive prayer?

And again, close to him, Muskwa whimpered softly.

Then Langdon turned to Bruce.

“It’s settled,” he said, and his words had a decisive ring in them.  “I’ve been trying to make up my mind all the morning, and it’s made up now.  You and Metoosin go on when the horses get their wind.  I’m going to ride down there a mile or so and free the cub where he’ll find his way back home!”

He did not wait for arguments or remarks, and Bruce made none.  He took
Muskwa in his arms and rode back into the south.