James Oliver Curwood

“ Thor was again responsible for a fight between Muskwa and Pipoonaskoos. Late in the afternoon the older bears were lying down side by side in a thicket when, without any apparent reason at all, Thor opened his huge jaws and emitted a low, steady, growling roar that sounded very much like the sound he had made when tearing the life out of the big black. Iskwao raised her head and joined him in the tumult, both of them perfectly good-natured and quite happy during the operation. Why mating bears indulge in this blood-curdling duet is a mystery which only the bears themselves can explain. ”

“ When he reached the slope on which he had hobbled his horse Thor was no longer in sight. The horse was where he had left it. Not until he was in the saddle did Langdon feel that he was completely safe. Then he laughed, a nervous, broken, joyous sort of laugh, and as he scanned the valley he filled his pipe with fresh tobacco.
"You great big god of a bear!" he whispered, and every fibre in him was trembling in a wonderful excitement as he found voice for the first time. "You—you monster with a heart bigger than man!" ”

“ But Langdon's Airedales were fighters. To the last dog they had come of fighting stock, and Bruce and Metoosin had trained them until they could be hung up by their ears without whimpering. The tragic fate of three of their number frightened them no more than their own pursuit had frightened Thor.
Swift as lightning they circled about the grizzly, spreading themselves on their forefeet, ready to spring aside or backward to avoid sudden rushes, and giving voice now to that quick, fierce yapping which tells hunters their quarry is at bay. ”

“ Yard by yard Thor worked his way upward, snarling at the frantic pack, defying the man-smell, the strange thunder, the burning lightning—even death itself, and five hundred yards below Langdon cursed despairingly as the dogs hung so close he could not fire.
Up to the very sky-line the blood-thirsting pack shielded Thor. He disappeared over the summit. The dogs followed. And after that their baying came fainter and fainter as the big grizzly led them swiftly away from the menace of man in a long and thrilling race from which more than one was doomed not to return. ”

“ With his little ears cocked forward and a new gleam of understanding in his eyes, Muskwa now looked upon his first lesson in game-stalking. Crouched so low that he seemed to be travelling on his belly, Thor moved slowly and noiselessly toward the creek, the huge ruff just forward of his shoulders standing out like the stiffened spine of a dog's back. Muskwa followed. For fully a hundred yards Thor continued his detour, and three times in that hundred yards he paused to sniff in the direction of the timber. At last he was satisfied. The wind was full in his face, and it was rich with promise. ”

“ From up and down the valley, from the breaks between the peaks, and from the little gullies cleft in shale and rock that crept up to the snow-lines came a soft and droning murmur. It was the music of running water. That music was always in the air, for the rivers, the creeks, and the tiny streams gushing down from the snow that lay eternally up near the clouds were never still.
There were sweet perfumes as well as music in the air. June and July—the last of spring and the first of summer in the northern mountains—were commingling. The earth was bursting with green ”

“ 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 in all the Rocky Mountains, so far as Bruce or Langdon knew, there was not a man who had found the bones or body of a grizzly that had died a natural death!
And big, hunted Thor, torn by wound and pursued by man, seemed to understand that this would be the last real feast on earth for Kuyas Wapusk—too old to fish for himself, too old to hunt, too old even to dig out the tender lily roots; and so he let him eat until the last fish was gone, and then went on, with Muskwa tagging at his heels. ”

“ For half an hour after leaving the mass of rocks where he had encountered Muskwa, Thor lumbered on as if utterly oblivious of the fact that the cub was following. But he could hear him and smell him.
Muskwa was having a hard time of it. His fat little body and his fat little legs were unaccustomed to this sort of journeying, but he was a game youngster, and only twice did he whimper in that half-hour—once he toppled off a rock into the edge of the creek, and again when he came down too hard on the porcupine quill in his foot. ”

“ And Thor, if he explained to him at all, told him that winter was very near, and that these slopes were their last feeding grounds. In the valleys the berries were gone; grass and roots alone were no longer nourishing enough for their bodies; they could no longer waste time in seeking ants and grubs; the fish were in deep water. It was the season when the caribou were keen-scented as foxes and swift as the wind. Only along the slopes lay the dinners they were sure of—famine-day dinners of whistlers and gophers. Thor dug for them now, and in this digging Muskwa helped as much as he could. ”

“ She was a splendid grizzly who came from the western ranges when the spirit of mating days called; big, and strong, and of a beautiful golden-brown colour, so that the children of Thor and his Iskwao were the finest young grizzlies in all the mountains. The mother took them back with her unborn, and they opened their eyes and lived and fought in the valleys and on the slopes far to the west. If in later years Thor ever chased his own children out of his hunting grounds, or whipped them in a fight, Nature kindly blinded him to the fact. ”

“ Suddenly Muskwa made a sharp turn, and the momentum with which Bruce was coming carried him thirty or forty feet below him, where the lanky mountaineer stopped himself only by doubling up like a jack-knife and digging toes, hands, elbows, and even his shoulders in the soft shale.
Langdon had switched, and was hot after Muskwa. He flung himself face downward, shirt outspread, just as the cub made another turn, and when he rose to his feet his face was scratched and he spat half a handful of dirt and shale out of his mouth. ”

“ At last Thor abandoned the creek and turned up a deep ravine, which he followed until he came to a dip, or plateau-like plain, halfway up a broad slope. Here he found a rock on the sunny side of a grassy knoll, and stopped. It may be that little Muskwa's babyish friendship, the caress of his soft little red tongue at just the psychological moment, and his perseverance in following Thor had all combined to touch a responsive chord in the other's big brute heart, for after nosing about restlessly for a few moments Thor stretched himself out beside the rock. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The first night after leaving Iskwao and Pipoonaskoos the big grizzly and the tan-faced cub wandered without sleep under the brilliant stars. Thor did not hunt for meat. He climbed a steep slope, then went down the shale side of a dip, and in a small basin hidden at the foot of a mountain came to a soft green meadow where the dog-tooth violet, with its slender stem, its two lily-like leaves, its single cluster of five-petalled flowers, and its luscious, bulbous root grew in great profusion. ”

“ Also, his rifle was meaningless, but he clung to it. The pack on his back held no significance and no weight for him. He might have travelled a mile or ten miles an hour and he would not have sensed the difference. Most men would have buried themselves in the snow, and died in comfort, dreaming the pleasant dreams which come as a sort of recompense to the unfortunate who die of starvation and cold. But the fighting spark commanded Roscoe to die upon his feet, if he died at all. It was this spark which brought him at last to a bit of timber thick enough to give him shelter from wind and snow. ”

“ He talks and chatters and chuckles incessantly, and when he travels he walks like a huge animated pincushion; he is oblivious of everything about him as though asleep.
As this particular "porky" advanced upon Muskwa and Thor, he was communing happily with himself, the chuckling notes he made sounding very much like a baby's cooing. He was enormously fat, and as he waddled slowly along his side and tail quills clicked on the stones. His eyes were on the path at his feet. He was deeply absorbed in nothing at all, and he was within five feet of Thor before he saw the grizzly. ”

“ He must hide! He must constantly guard himself in the peaks and on the plains with eyes and ears and nose!
Why he sensed this, why he understood all at once that a creature had come into his world, a pigmy in size, yet more to be dreaded than any foe he had ever known, was a miracle which nature alone could explain. It was a hearkening back in the age-dimmed mental fabric of Thor's race to the earliest days of man—man, first of all, with the club; man with the spear hardened in fire; man with the flint-tipped arrow; man with the trap and the deadfall, and, lastly, man with the gun. ”

“ It is true that in the great open spaces one must kill to live; one must have meat, and meat is life. But killing for food is not the lust of slaughter; it is not the lust which always recalls to me that day in the British Columbia mountains when, in less than two hours, I killed four grizzlies on a mountain slide—a destruction of possibly a hundred and twenty years of life in a hundred and twenty minutes. And that is only one instance of many in which I now regard myself as having been almost a criminal—for killing for the excitement of killing can be little less than murder. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This old bear was famished. His claws were gone; his hair was thin, and in some places his skin was naked, and he had barely more than red, hard gums to chew with. If he lived until autumn he would den up—for the last time. Perhaps death would come even sooner than that. If so, Kuyas Wapusk would know in time, and he would crawl off into some hidden cave or deep crevice in the rocks to breathe his last. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He hated man, and hereafter he would hate everything that bore the man-smell. And with this hate there was also born in him for the first time fear. Had man never pushed Thor and his kind to the death the world would not have known him as Ursus Horribilis the Terrible.
Thor still followed the creek, nosing along slowly and lumberingly, but very steadily; his head and neck bent low, his huge rear quarters rising and falling in that rolling motion peculiar to all bears, and especially so of the grizzly. ”

“ Seventy-five yards below them their cache was being outraged. The robber was a huge black bear. He was a splendid outlaw. He was, perhaps, three hundred pounds lighter than Thor, but he stood almost as high, and in the sunlight his coat shone with the velvety gloss of sable—the biggest and boldest bear that had entered Thor's domain in many a day. He had pulled the caribou carcass from its hiding-place and was eating as Thor and Muskwa looked down on him. ”