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. The whistlers had
piped until they were tired, and lay squat out in the sunshine on their
rocks; the eagles soared so high above the peaks that they were mere dots;
the hawks, with meat-filled crops, had disappeared into the timber; goat
and sheep were lying down far up toward the sky-line, and if there were any
grazing animals near they were well fed and napping.

The mountain hunter knew that this was the hour when he should scan the
green slopes and the open places between the clumps of timber for bears,
and especially for flesh-eating bears.

It was Thor's chief prospecting hour. Instinct told him that when all
other creatures were well fed and napping he could move more openly and
with less fear of detection. He could find his game, and watch it.
Occasionally he would kill a goat or a sheep or a caribou in broad
daylight, for over short distances he could run faster than either a goat
or a sheep, and as fast as a caribou. But chiefly he killed at sunset or in
the darkness of early evening.

Thor rose from beside the rock with a prodigious whoof that roused Muskwa.
The cub got up, blinked at Thor and then at the sun, and shook himself
until he fell down.

Thor eyed the black and tan mite a bit sourly. After the _sapoos oowin_ he
was craving red, juicy flesh, just as a very hungry man yearns for a thick
porterhouse instead of lady fingers or mayonnaise salad--flesh and plenty
of it; and how he could hunt down and kill a caribou with that half-starved
but very much interested cub at his heels puzzled him.