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. In the rough places he stumbled and fell frequently; up places that
Thor could make in a single step he had to fight desperately to make his
way; three times Thor waded through the creek and Muskwa half drowned
himself in following; he was battered and bruised and wet and his foot hurt
him--but he followed. Sometimes he was close to Thor, and at others he had
to run to catch up. The sun was setting when Thor at last found game, and
Muskwa was almost dead.

He did not know why Thor flattened his huge bulk suddenly alongside a rock
at the edge of a rough meadow, from which they could look down into a small
hollow. He wanted to whimper, but he was afraid. And if he had ever wanted
his mother at any time in his short life he wanted her now. He could not
understand why she had left him among the rocks and had never come back;
that tragedy Langdon and Bruce were to discover a little later. And he
could not understand why she did not come to him now. This was just about
his nursing hour before going to sleep for the night, for he was a March
cub, and, according to the most approved mother-bear regulations, should
have had milk for another month.

He was what Metoosin, the Indian, would have called _munookow_--that is, he
was very soft. Being a bear, his birth had not been like that of other
animals. His mother, like all mother-bears in a cold country, had brought
him into life a long time before she had finished her winter nap in her
den. He had come while she was asleep. For a month or six weeks after