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Twenty feet on the other side was a sheer fall of a hundred feet, and the way ahead was closed with the exception of a trail scarcely wider than Thor's body by a huge crag of rock that had fallen from the shoulder of the mountain. The big grizzly led Muskwa close up to this crag and the break that opened through it, and then turned suddenly back, so that Muskwa was behind him.
It was noon before they climbed over the volcanic quarry of rock and followed the Bighorn Highway to the point where Thor and Muskwa had watched the eagle and the sheep. They ate their lunch here, and scanned the valley through their glasses. Bruce was silent for a long time. Then he lowered his telescope, and turned to Langdon. "I guess I've got his range pretty well figgered out," he said.
It may be, too, that he guessed how nearly starved little Muskwa was. The cub had not once opened his eyes, and he still lay in his warm pool of sunshine when Thor made up his mind to go on. It was about three o'clock, a particularly quiet and drowsy part of a late June or early July day in a northern mountain valley.
He looked down into the valley, shimmering in the wet of the night's rain, and he saw nothing to rouse discontent; he sniffed the air, and it was filled with the unpolluted sweetness of growing grass, of flowers, and balsam, and water fresh from the clouds. Thor began to lick his wound, and it was this movement that roused Muskwa. The cub lifted his head.
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.
It was too deep for him, and Thor did not make an excited plunge. Patiently he waited, and very soon this patience was rewarded. A beautiful red-spotted trout floated out from under the scum, and so suddenly that Muskwa gave a yelp of terror, Thor's huge paw sent a shower of water a dozen feet into the air, and the fish landed with a thump within three feet of the cub.
He tossed it close to where Muskwa was hidden behind his tree. "A skin like velvet, and some meat for the dogs," he said. "I shot it with my pistol." He sat down and began eating. After a little Muskwa cautiously approached the carcass that lay doubled up three or four feet from him. He smelled of it, and a curious thrill shot through him.
Then Langdon brought forth another can from a cowhide pannier and opened it directly under Muskwa, so that he could see the creamy white fluid as it was turned into the basin. He held the basin up to Muskwa, so close that the milk touched the cub's nose, and for the life of him Muskwa could not keep his tongue in his mouth. Inside of five minutes he was eating from the basin in Langdon's hand!
And Muskwa, perking up his little ears, came and stood beside him, his sharp little eyes peering from Thor off into sunlit space, and then back to Thor again, as if wondering what was about to happen next. The big grizzly answered the question. He turned along the rock shelf and began descending into the valley. Muskwa tagged behind, just as he had followed the day before.
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