Finally the larger cub got away and again took to flight. Muskwa pursued him, into the brush and out, down to the creek and back, halfway up the slope and down again, until he was so tired he had to drop on his belly for a rest.
At this juncture Thor emerged from the thicket. He was alone. For the first time since last night he seemed to notice Muskwa. Then he sniffed the wind up the valley and down the valley, and after that turned and walked straight toward the distant slopes down which they had come the preceding afternoon. Muskwa was both pleased and perplexed. He wanted to go into the thicket and snarl and pull at the hide of the dead bear that must be in there, and he also wanted to finish Pipoonaskoos. After a moment or two of hesitation he ran after Thor and again followed close at his heels.
After a little Iskwao came from the thicket and nosed the wind as Thor had felt it. Then she turned in the opposite direction, and with Pipoonaskoos close behind her, went up the slope and continued slowly and steadily in the face of the setting sun.
So ended Thor"s love-making and Muskwa"s first fighting; and together they trailed eastward again, to face the most terrible peril that had ever come into the mountains for four-footed beast-a peril that was merciless, a peril from which there was no escape, a peril that was fraught with death.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
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 cl.u.s.ter of five-petalled flowers, and its luscious, bulbous root grew in great profusion. And here all through the night he dug and ate.
Muskwa, who had filled himself on spring beauty roots, was not hungry, and as the day had been a restful one for him, outside of his fighting, he found this night filled with its brilliant stars quite enjoyable. The moon came up about ten o"clock, and it was the biggest, and the reddest, and the most beautiful moon Muskwa had seen in his short life. It rolled up over the peaks like a forest fire, and filled all the Rocky Mountains with a wonderful glow. The basin, in which there were perhaps ten acres of meadow, was lighted up almost like day. The little lake at the foot of the mountain glimmered softly, and the tiny stream that fed it from the melting snows a thousand feet above shot down in glistening cascades that caught the moonlight like rivulets of dull polished diamonds.
About the meadow were scattered little clumps of bushes and a few balsams and spruce, as if set there for ornamental purposes; and on one side there was a narrow, verdure-covered slide that sloped upward for a third of a mile, and at the top of which, unseen by Muskwa and Thor, a band of sheep were sleeping.
Muskwa wandered about, always near Thor, investigating the clumps of bushes, the dark shadows of the balsams and spruce, and the edge of the lake. Here he found a plashet of soft mud which was a great solace to his sore feet. Twenty times during the night he waded in the mud.
Even when the dawn came Thor seemed to be in no great haste to leave the basin. Until the sun was well up he continued to wander about the meadow and the edge of the lake, digging up occasional roots, and eating tender gra.s.s. This did not displease Muskwa, who made his breakfast of the dog-tooth violet bulbs. The one matter that puzzled him was why Thor did not go into the lake and throw out trout, for he yet had to learn that all water did not contain fish. At last he went fishing for himself, and succeeded in getting a black hard-sh.e.l.led water beetle that nipped his nose with a pair of needle-like pincers and brought a yelp from him.
It was perhaps ten o"clock, and the sun-filled basin was like a warm oven to a thick-coated bear, when Thor searched up among the rocks near the waterfall until he found a place that was as cool as an old-fashioned cellar. It was a miniature cavern. All about it the slate and sandstone was of a dark and clammy wet from a hundred little trickles of snow water that ran down from the peaks.
It was just the sort of a place Thor loved on a July day, but to Muskwa it was dark and gloomy and not a thousandth part as pleasant as the sun. So after an hour or two he left Thor in his frigidarium and began to investigate the treacherous ledges.
For a few minutes all went well--then he stepped on a green-tinted slope of slate over which a very shallow dribble of water was running. The water had been running over it in just that way for some centuries, and the shelving slate was worn as smooth as the surface of a polished pearl, and it was as slippery as a greased pole. Muskwa"s feet went out from under him so quickly that he hardly knew what had happened. The next moment he was on his way to the lake a hundred feet below. He rolled over and over. He plashed into shallow pools. He bounced over miniature waterfalls like a rubber ball. The wind was knocked out of him. He was blinded and dazed by water and shock, and he gathered fresh speed with every yard he made. He had succeeded in letting out half a dozen terrified yelps at the start, and these roused Thor.
Where the water from the peaks fell into the lake there was a precipitous drop of ten feet, and over this Muskwa shot with a momentum that carried him twice as far out into the pond. He hit with a big splash, and disappeared. Down and down he went, where everything was black and cold and suffocating; then the life-preserver with which nature had endowed him in the form of his fat brought him to the surface. He began to paddle with all four feet. It was his first swim, and when he finally dragged himself ash.o.r.e he was limp and exhausted.
While he still lay panting and very much frightened, Thor came down from the rocks. Muskwa"s mother had given him a sound cuffing when he got the porcupine quill in his foot. She had cuffed him for every accident he had had, because she believed that cuffing was good medicine. Education is largely cuffed into a bear cub, and she would have given him a fine cuffing now. But Thor only smelled of him, saw that he was all right, and began to dig up a dog-tooth violet.
He had not finished the violet when suddenly he stopped. For a half-minute he stood like a statue. Muskwa jumped and shook himself. Then he listened.
A sound came to both of them. In one slow, graceful movement the grizzly reared himself to his full height. He faced the north, his ears thrust forward, the sensitive muscles of his nostrils twitching. He could smell nothing, but he _heard_!
Over the slopes which they had climbed there had come to him faintly a sound that was new to him, a sound that had never before been a part of his life. It was the barking of dogs.
For two minutes Thor sat on his haunches without moving a muscle of his great body except those twitching thews in his nose.
Deep down in this cup under the mountain it was difficult even for sound to reach him. Quickly he swung down on all fours and made for the green slope to the southward, at the top of which the band of sheep had slept during the preceding night. Muskwa hurried after.
A hundred yards up the slope Thor stopped and turned. Again he reared himself. Now Muskwa also faced to the north. A sudden downward drift of the wind brought the barking of the dogs to them clearly.
Less than half a mile away Langdon"s pack of trained Airedales were hot on the scent. Their baying was filled with the fierce excitement which told Bruce and Langdon, a quarter of a mile behind them, that they were close upon their prey.
And even more than it thrilled them did the tongueing of the dogs thrill Thor. Again it was instinct that told him a new enemy had come into his world. He was not afraid. But that instinct urged him to retreat, and he went higher until he came to a part of the mountain that was rough and broken, where once more he halted.
This time he waited. Whatever the menace was it was drawing nearer with the swiftness of the wind. He could hear it coming up the slope that sheltered the basin from the valley.
The crest of that slope was just about on a level with Thor"s eyes, and as he looked the leader of the pack came up over the edge of it and stood for a moment outlined against the sky. The others followed quickly, and for perhaps thirty seconds they stood rigid on the cap of the hill, looking down into the basin at their feet and sniffing the heavy scent with which it was filled.
During those thirty seconds Thor watched his enemies without moving, while in his deep chest there gathered slowly a low and terrible growl. Not until the pack swept down into the cup of the mountain, giving full tongue again, did he continue his retreat. But it was not flight. He was not afraid. He was going on--because to go on was his business. He was not seeking trouble; he had no desire even to defend his possession of the meadow and the little lake under the mountain. There were other meadows and other lakes, and he was not naturally a lover of fighting. But he was ready to fight.
He continued to rumble ominously, and in him there was burning a slow and sullen anger. He buried himself among the rocks; he followed a ledge with Muskwa slinking close at his heels; he climbed over a huge scarp of rock, and twisted among boulders half as big as houses. But not once did he go where Muskwa could not easily follow. Once, when he drew himself from a ledge to a projecting seam of sandstone higher up, and found that Muskwa could not climb it, he came down and went another way.
The baying of the dogs was now deep down in the basin. Then it began to rise swiftly, as if on wings, and Thor knew that the pack was coming up the green slide. He stopped again, and this time the wind brought their scent to him full and strong.
It was a scent that tightened every muscle in his great body and set strange fires burning in him like raging furnaces. With the dogs came also the _man-smell_!
He travelled upward a little faster now, and the fierce and joyous yelping of the dogs seemed scarcely a hundred yards away when he entered a small open s.p.a.ce in the wild upheaval of rock. On the mountainside was a wall that rose perpendicularly. 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. In the face of the peril that was almost upon them a mother-bear would have driven Muskwa into the safety of a crevice in the rock wall. Thor did not do this. He fronted the danger that was coming, and reared himself up on his hind quarters.
Twenty feet away the trail he had followed swung sharply around a projecting bulge in the perpendicular wall, and with eyes that were now red and terrible Thor watched the trap he had set.
The pack was coming full tongue. Fifty yards beyond the bulge the dogs were running shoulder to shoulder, and a moment later the first of them rushed into the arena which Thor had chosen for himself. The bulk of the horde followed so closely that the first dogs were flung under him as they strove frantically to stop themselves in time.
With a roar Thor launched himself among them. His great right arm swept out and inward, and it seemed to Muskwa that he had gathered a half of the pack under his huge body. With a single crunch of his jaws he broke the back of the foremost hunter. From a second he tore the head so that the windpipe trailed out like a red rope.
He rolled himself forward, and before the remaining dogs could recover from their panic he had caught one a blow that sent him flying over the edge of the precipice to the rocks a hundred feet below. It had all happened in half a minute, and in that half-minute the remaining nine dogs had scattered.
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. This was their business--to hara.s.s and torment, to r.e.t.a.r.d flight, to stop their prey again and again until their masters came to finish the kill. It was a quite fair and thrilling sport for the bear and the dogs. The man who comes up with the rifle ends it in murder.
But if the dogs had their tricks, Thor also had his. After three or four vain rushes, in which the Airedales eluded him by their superior quickness, he backed slowly toward the huge rock beside which Muskwa was crouching, and as he retreated the dogs advanced.
Their increased barking and Thor"s evident inability to drive them away or tear them to pieces terrified Muskwa more than ever. Suddenly he turned tail and darted into a crevice in the rock behind him.
Thor continued to back until his great hips touched the stone. Then he swung his head side wise and looked for the cub. Not a hair of Muskwa was to be seen. Twice Thor turned his head. After that, seeing that Muskwa was gone, he continued to retreat until he blocked the narrow pa.s.sage that was his back door to safety.
The dogs were now barking like mad. They were drooling at their mouths, their wiry crests stood up like brushes, and their snarling fangs were bared to their red gums.
Nearer and nearer they came to him, challenging him to stay, to rush them, to catch them if he could--and in their excitement they put ten yards of open s.p.a.ce behind them. Thor measured this s.p.a.ce, as he had measured the distance between him and the young bull caribou a few days before. And then, without so much as a snarl of warning, he darted out upon his enemies with a suddenness that sent them flying wildly for their lives.
Thor did not stop. He kept on. Where the rock wall bulged out the trail narrowed to five feet, and he had measured this fact as well as the distance. He caught the last dog, and drove it down under his paw. As it was torn to pieces the Airedale emitted piercing cries of agony that reached Bruce and Langdon as they hurried panting and wind-broken up the slide that led from the basin.
Thor dropped on his belly in the narrowed trail, and as the pack broke loose with fresh voice he continued to tear at his victim until the rock was smeared with blood and hair and entrails. Then he rose to his feet and looked again for Muskwa. The cub was curled up in a shivering ball two feet in the crevice. It may be that Thor thought he had gone on up the mountain, for he lost no time now in retreating from the scene of battle. He had caught the wind again. Bruce and Langdon were sweating, and their smell came to him strongly.
For ten minutes Thor paid no attention to the eight dogs yapping at his heels, except to pause now and then and swing his head about. As he continued in his retreat the Airedales became bolder, until finally one of them sprang ahead of the rest and buried his fangs in the grizzly"s leg.
This accomplished what barking had failed to do. With another roar Thor turned and pursued the pack headlong for fifty yards over the back-trail, and five precious minutes were lost before he continued upward toward the shoulder of the mountain.
Had the wind been in another direction the pack would have triumphed, but each time that Langdon and Bruce gained ground the wind warned Thor by bringing to him the warm odour of their bodies. And the grizzly was careful to keep that wind from the right quarter. He could have gained the top of the mountain more easily and quickly by quartering the face of it on a back-trail, but this would have thrown the wind too far under him. As long as he held the wind he was safe, unless the hunters made an effort to checkmate his method of escape by detouring and cutting him off.
It took him half an hour to reach the topmost ridge of rock, from which point he would have to break cover and reveal himself as he made the last two or three hundred yards up the shale side of the mountain to the backbone of the range.
When Thor made this break he put on a sudden spurt of speed that left the dogs thirty or forty yards behind him. For two or three minutes he was clearly outlined on the face of the mountain, and during the last minute of those three he was splendidly profiled against a carpet of pure-white snow, without a shrub or a rock to conceal him from the eyes below.