PART II

I.

The years went on as before, except that each winter Wahb slept less
soundly, and each spring he came out earlier and was a bigger Grizzly,
with fewer enemies that dared to face him. When his sixth year came he
was a very big, strong, sullen Bear, with neither friendship nor love in
his life since that evil day on the Lower Piney.

No one ever heard of Wahb's mate. No one believes that he ever had one.
The love-season of Bears came and went year after year, but left him
alone in his prime as he had been in his youth. It is not good for
a Bear to be alone; it is bad for him in every way. His habitual
moroseness grew with his strength, and any one chancing to meet him now
would have called him a dangerous Grizzly.

He had lived in the Meteetsee Valley since first he betook himself
there, and his character had been shaped by many little adventures with
traps and his wild rivals of the mountains. But there was none of the
latter that he now feared, and he knew enough to avoid the first, for
that penetrating odor of man and iron was a never-failing warning,
especially after an experience which befell him in his sixth year.

His ever-reliable nose told him that there was a dead Elk down among the
timber.