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But slowly and steadily it rose above this, and at last he got up from where he was lying with his back to a tree and walked out from the timber, where he could hear more plainly. Muskwa followed him, and when Langdon stopped the tan-faced cub also stopped. His little ears shot out inquisitively. He turned his head to the north. From that direction the sound was coming.
Not until then did the utterly exhausted little tan-faced cub lie down, but when he did lie down he was so dead tired that he was sound asleep in three minutes. Twice again during the early part of the afternoon the sapoos oowin worked on Thor, and he began to feel hungry. It was not the sort of hunger to be appeased by ants and grubs, or even gophers and whistlers.
And down in the meadow Muskwa ran to Thor with a bit of warm black hide in his mouth, and Thor lowered his great bleeding head, and just once his red tongue shot out and caressed Muskwa's face. For the little tan-faced cub had proved himself; and it may be that Thor had seen and understood. Neither Thor nor Muskwa went near the caribou meat after the big fight.
The incense rose in clouds to the gilded, diapered roof, the organ pealed ... then the ward seemed to fill with men in khâki Service dress, keen-eyed and tan-faced beings, of quiet movements and well-bred gestures, obviously stamped with the cachet of authority.
For still another two hours Thor led Muskwa on that tiresome jaunt into the north. They had travelled a good twenty miles since leaving the Bighorn Highway, and to the little tan-faced cub those twenty miles were like a journey around the world. Ordinarily he would not have gone that far away from his birthplace until his second year, and very possibly his third.
On a side-deck, leaning over the rail, stood a man and a woman. The man was strong, tan-faced, his eyes bright with fresh power. The woman was rosy-cheeked and exquisite in her new beauty. For the miracle of Spring which changed the earth had changed Myra and Joe. They too had put forth power and life, blossom and new green leaves.
Within three or four hundred yards of the great mass of boulders where the grizzly had come upon the tan-faced cub was a small copse of spruce in the heart of a grassy dip, and here the hunters stripped and hobbled their horses. Twenty minutes later they had come up cautiously to the soft carpet of sand where Thor and Muskwa had become acquainted.
They stopped and drank at a pool formed by the melting snow on the peaks, and then went on. Thor did not stop when they reached the ledge on which they had slept the previous night. And this time Muskwa was not tired when they reached the ledge. Two days had made a big change in the little tan-faced cub. He was not so round and puffy.
This trail was fresher, and to the young wolves it seemed to promise easier hunting. The leaders were overruled, and the new trail was taken up with heat. The trail was that of a gaunt, tan-faced backwoodsman, on his way to a lumber camp a few miles down the other side of the lake.
Mostly these had travelled along the creek-bottom, showing they were blacks or cinnamons. Once Thor struck the scent of another grizzly, and he rumbled ill-humouredly. Not once in the two hours after they left the sunrock did Thor pay any apparent attention to Muskwa, who was growing hungrier and weaker as the day lengthened. No boy that ever lived was gamer than the little tan-faced cub.
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