Muskwa himself seemed to understand and answer the question. He ran a dozen
yards ahead of Thor, then stopped and looked back impudently, his little
ears perked forward, and with the look in his face of a small boy proving
to his father that he is perfectly qualified to go on his first rabbit
hunt.

With another _whoof_ Thor started along the slope in a spurt that brought
him up to Muskwa immediately, and with a sudden sweep of his right paw he
sent the cub rolling a dozen feet behind him, a manner of speech that said
plainly enough, "That's where you belong if you're going hunting with me!"

Then Thor lumbered slowly on, eyes and ears and nostrils keyed for the
hunt. He descended until he was not more than a hundred yards above the
creek, and he no longer sought out the easiest trail, but the rough and
broken places. He travelled slowly and in a zigzag fashion, stealing
cautiously around great masses of boulders, sniffing up each coulee that he
came to, and investigating the timber clumps and windfalls.

At one time he would be so high up that he was close to the bare shale, and
again so low down that he walked in the sand and gravel of the creek. He
caught many scents in the wind, but none that held or deeply interested
him. Once, up near the shale, he smelled goat; but he never went above the
shale for meat. Twice he smelled sheep, and late in the afternoon he saw a
big ram looking down on him from a precipitous crag a hundred feet above.

Lower down his nose touched the trails of porcupines, and often his head
hung over the footprints of caribou as he sniffed the air ahead.

There were other bears in the valley, too. Mostly these had travelled along