He was travelling southward, which brought him nearer the hunters" camp. He was keeping to the high slopes where there were little dips and meadows, broken by patches of shale, deep coulees, and occasionally wild upheavals of rock. He was keeping the wind straight ahead so that he would not fail to catch the smell of Iskwao when he came near her, and with the baying of the dogs he caught no scent of the pursuing beasts, or of the two men who were riding behind them.
At another time he would have played his favourite trick of detouring so that the danger would be ahead of him, with the wind in his favour. Caution had now become secondary to his desire to find his mate. The dogs were less than half a mile away when he stopped suddenly, sniffed the air for a moment, and then went on swiftly until he was halted by a narrow ravine.
Up that ravine Iskwao was coming from a dip lower down the mountain, and she was running. The yelping of the pack was fierce and close when Thor scrambled down in time to meet her as she rushed upward. Iskwao paused for a single moment, smelled noses with Thor, and then went on, her ears laid back flat and sullen and her throat filled with growling menace.
Thor followed her, and he also growled. He knew that his mate was fleeing from the dogs, and again that deadly and slowly increasing wrath swept through him as he climbed after her higher up the mountain.
In such an hour as this Thor was at his worst. He was a fighter when pursued as the dogs had pursued him a week before--but he was a demon, terrible and without mercy, when danger threatened his mate.
He fell farther and farther behind Iskwao, and twice lie turned, his fangs gleaming under drawn lips, and his defiance rolling back upon his enemies in low thunder.
When he came up out of the coulee he was in the shadow of the peak, and Iskwao had already disappeared in her skyward scramble. Where she had gone was a wild chaos of rock-slide and the piled-up debris of fallen and shattered ma.s.ses of sandstone crag. The sky-line was not more than three hundred yards above him. He looked up. Iskwao was among the rocks, and here was the place to fight. The dogs were close upon him now. They were coming up the last stretch of the coulee, baying loudly. Thor turned about, and waited for them.
Half a mile to the south, looking through his gla.s.ses, Langdon saw Thor, and at almost the same instant the dogs appeared over the edge of the coulee. He had ridden halfway up the mountain; from that point he had climbed higher, and was following a well-beaten sheep trail at about the same alt.i.tude as Thor. From where he stood the valley lay under his gla.s.ses for miles. He did not have far to look to discover Bruce and the Indian.
They were dismounting at the foot of the coulee, and as he gazed they ran quickly into it and disappeared.
Again Langdon swung back to Thor. The dogs were holding him now, and he knew there was no chance of the grizzly killing them in that open s.p.a.ce.
Then he saw movement among the rocks higher up, and a low cry of understanding broke from his lips as he made out Iskwao climbing steadily toward the ragged peak. He knew that this second bear was a female. The big grizzly--her mate--had stopped to fight. And there was no hope for him if the dogs succeeded in holding him for a matter of ten or fifteen minutes.
Bruce and Metoosin would appear in that time over the rim of the coulee at a range of less than a hundred yards!
Langdon thrust his binoculars in their case and started at a run along the sheep trail. For two hundred yards his progress was easy, and then the patch broke into a thousand individual tracks on a slope of soft and slippery shale, and it took him five minutes to make the next fifty yards.
The trail hardened again. He ran on pantingly, and for another five minutes the shoulder of a ridge hid Thor and the dogs from him. When he came over that ridge and ran fifty yards, down the farther side of it, he stopped short. Further progress was barred by a steep ravine. He was five hundred yards from where Thor stood with his back to the rocks and his huge head to the pack.
Even as he looked, struggling to get breath enough to shout, Langdon expected to see Bruce and Metoosin appear out of the coulee. It flashed upon him then that even if he could make them hear it would be impossible for them to understand him. Bruce would not guess that he wanted to spare the beast they had been hunting for almost two weeks.
Thor had rushed the dogs a full twenty yards toward the coulee when Langdon dropped quickly behind a rock. There was only one way of saving him now, if he was not too late. The pack had retreated a few yards down the slope, and he aimed at the pack. One thought only filled his brain--he must sacrifice his dogs or let Thor die. And that day Thor had given him his life!
There was no hesitation as he pressed the trigger. It was a long shot, and the first bullet threw up a cloud of dust fifty feet short of the Airedales. He fired again, and missed. The third time his rifle cracked there answered it a sharp yelp of pain which Laagdon himself did not hear.
One of the dogs rolled over and over down the slope.
The reports of the shots alone had not stirred Thor, but now when he saw one of his enemies crumple up and go rolling down the mountain he turned slowly toward the safety of the rocks. A fourth and then a fifth shot followed, and at the fifth the yelping dogs dropped back toward the coulee, one of them limping with a shattered fore-foot.
Langdon sprang upon the boulder over which he had rested his gun, and his eyes caught the sky-line. Iskwao had just reached the top. She paused for a moment and looked down. Then she disappeared.
Thor was now hidden among the boulders and broken ma.s.ses of sandstone, following her trail. Within two minutes after the grizzly disappeared Bruce and Metoosin scrambled up over the edge of the coulee. From where they stood even the sky-line was within fairly good shooting distance, and Langdon suddenly began shouting excitedly, waving his arms, and pointing downward.
Bruce and Metoosin were caught by his ruse, in spite of the fact that the dogs were again giving fierce tongue close to the rocks among which Thor had gone. They believed that from where he stood Langdon could see the progress of the bear, and that it was running toward the valley. Not until they were another hundred yards down the slope did they stop and look back at Langdon to get further directions. From his rock Langdon was pointing to the sky-line.
Thor was just going over. He paused for a moment, as Iskwao had stopped, and took one last look at man.
And Langdon, as he saw the last of him, waved his hat and shouted, "Good luck to you, old man--good luck!"
CHAPTER NINETEEN
That night Langdon and Bruce made their new plans, while Metoosin sat aloof, smoking in stolid silence, and gazing now and then at Langdon as if he could not yet bring himself to the point of believing what had happened that afternoon. Thereafter through many moons Metoosin would never forget to relate to his children and his grandchildren and his friends of the tepee tribes how he had once hunted with a white man who had shot his own dogs to save the life of a grizzly bear. Langdon was no longer the same old Langdon to him, and after this hunt Metoosin knew that he would never hunt with him again. For Langdon was _keskwao_ now. Something had gone wrong in his head. The Great Spirit had taken away his heart and had given it to a grizzly bear, and over his pipe Metoosin watched him cautiously. This suspicion was confirmed when he saw Bruce and Langdon making a cage out of a cowhide pannier and realized that the cub was to accompany them on their long journey. There was no doubt in his mind now. Langdon was "queer," and to an Indian that sort of queerness boded no good to man.
The next morning at sunrise the outfit was ready for its long trail into the northland. Bruce and Langdon led the way up the slope and over the divide into the valley where they had first encountered Thor, the train filing picturesquely behind them, with Metoosin bringing up the rear. In his cowhide pannier rode Muskwa.
Langdon was satisfied and happy.
"It was the best hunt of my life," he said to Bruce. "I"ll never be sorry we let him live."
"You"re the doctor," said Bruce rather irreverently. "If I had my way about it his hide would be back there on Dishpan. Almost any tourist down on the line of rail would jump for it at a hundred dollars."
"He"s worth several thousand to me alive," replied Langdon, with which enigmatic retort he dropped behind to see how Muskwa was riding.
The cub was rolling and pitching about in his pannier like a raw amateur in a howdab on an elephant"s back, and after contemplating him for a few moments Langdon caught up with Bruce again.
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. He was looking steadily back into the valley.
It was glorious in the morning sun. He could see the peaks under which lay the cool, dark lake in which Thor had fished; for miles the slopes were like green velvet and there came to him as he looked the last droning music of Thor"s world. It struck him in a curious way as a sort of anthem, a hymnal rejoicing that he was going, and that he was leaving things as they were before he came. And yet, _was_ he leaving things as they had been? Did his ears not catch in that music of the mountains something of sadness, of grief, of plaintive prayer?
And again, close to him, Muskwa whimpered softly.
Then Langdon turned to Bruce.
"It"s settled," he said, and his words had a decisive ring in them. "I"ve been trying to make up my mind all the morning, and it"s made up now. You and Metoosin go on when the horses get their wind. I"m going to ride down there a mile or so and free the cub where he"ll find his way back home!"
He did not wait for arguments or remarks, and Bruce made none. He took Muskwa in his arms and rode back into the south.
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 gla.s.ses. 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 pa.s.sed.