A mile up the valley Langdon came to a wide, open meadow dotted with clumps of spruce and willows and sweet with the perfume of flowers.  Here he dismounted, and for ten minutes sat on the ground with Muskwa.  From his pocket he drew forth a small paper bag and fed the cub its last sugar.  A thick lump grew in his throat as Muskwa’s soft little nose muzzled the palm of his hand, and when at last he jumped up and sprang into his saddle there was a mist in his eyes.  He tried to laugh.  Perhaps he was weak.  But he loved Muskwa, and he knew that he was leaving more than a human friend in this mountain valley.

“Good-bye, old fellow,” he said, and his voice was choking.  “Good-bye, little Spitfire!  Mebby some day I’ll come back and see you, and you’ll be a big, fierce bear—­but I won’t shoot—­never—­never—­”

He rode fast into the north.  Three hundred yards away he turned his head and looked back.  Muskwa was following, but losing ground.  Langdon waved his hand.

“Good-bye!” he called through the lump in his throat.  “Good-bye!”

Half an hour later he looked down from the top of the slope through his glasses.  He saw Muskwa, a black dot.  The cub had stopped, and was waiting confidently for him to return.

And trying to laugh again, but failing dismally, Langdon rode over the divide and out of Muskwa’s life.

CHAPTER TWENTY

For a good half-mile Muskwa followed over the trail of Langdon.  He ran at first; then he walked; finally he stopped entirely and sat down like a dog, facing the distant slope.  Had Langdon been afoot he would not have halted until he was tired.  But the cub had not liked his pannier prison.  He had been tremendously jostled and bounced about, and twice the horse that carried him had shaken himself, and those shakings had been like earthquakes to Muskwa.  He knew that the cage as well as Langdon was ahead of him.  He sat for a time and whimpered wistfully, but he went no farther.  He was sure that the friend he had grown to love would return after a little.  He always came back.  He had never failed him.  So he began to hunt about for a spring beauty or a dog-tooth violet, and for some time he was careful not to stray very far away from where the outfit had passed.

All that day the cub remained in the flower-strewn meadows under the slope; it was very pleasant in the sunshine, and he found more than one patch of the bulbous roots he liked.  He dug, and he filled himself, and he took a nap in the afternoon; but when the sun began to go down and the heavy shadows of the mountain darkened the valley he began to grow afraid.

He was still a very small baby of a cub, and only that one dreadful night after his mother had died had he spent entirely alone.  Thor had replaced mother, and Langdon had taken the place of Thor, so that until now he had never felt the loneliness and emptiness of darkness.  He crawled under a clump of thorn close to the trail, and continued to wait, and listen, and sniff expectantly.  The stars came out clear and brilliant, but to-night their lure was not strong enough to call him forth.  Not until dawn did he steal out cautiously from his shelter of thorn.