Of all the living creatures in this sleeping valley, Thor was the busiest.
He was a bear with individuality, you might say. Like some people, he went
to bed very early; he began to get sleepy in October, and turned in for his
long nap in November. He slept until April, and usually was a week or ten
days behind other bears in waking. He was a sound sleeper, and when awake
he was very wide awake. During April and May he permitted himself to doze
considerably in the warmth of sunny rocks, but from the beginning of June
until the middle of September he closed his eyes in real sleep just about
four hours out of every twelve.
He was very busy as Langdon began his cautious climb up the gully. He had
succeeded in getting his gopher, a fat, aldermanic old patriarch who had
disappeared in one crunch and a gulp, and he was now absorbed in finishing
off his day's feast with an occasional fat, white grub and a few sour ants
captured from under stones which he turned over with his paw.
In his search after these delicacies Thor used his right paw in turning
over the rocks. Ninety-nine out of every hundred bears--probably a hundred
and ninety-nine out of every two hundred--are left-handed; Thor was
right-handed. This gave him an advantage in fighting, in fishing, and in
stalking meat, for a grizzly's right arm is longer than his left--so much
longer that if he lost his sixth sense of orientation he would be
constantly travelling in a circle.
In his quest Thor was headed for the gully. His huge head hung close to the
ground. At short distances his vision was microscopic in its keenness; his
olfactory nerves were so sensitive that he could catch one of the big
rock-ants with his eyes shut.
He would choose the flat rocks mostly. His huge right paw, with its long
claws, was as clever as a human hand. The stone lifted, a sniff or two, a
lick of his hot, flat tongue, and he ambled on to the next.
He took this work with tremendous seriousness, much like an elephant
hunting for peanuts hidden in a bale of hay. He saw no humour in the
operation. As a matter of fact, Nature had not intended there should be any
humour about it. Thor's time was more or less valueless, and during the
course of a summer he absorbed in his system a good many hundred thousand
sour ants, sweet grubs, and juicy insects of various kinds, not to mention
a host of gophers and still tinier rock-rabbits. These small things all
added to the huge rolls of fat which it was necessary for him to store up
for that "absorptive consumption" which kept him alive during his long
winter sleep. This was why Nature had made his little greenish-brown eyes
twin microscopes, infallible at distances of a few feet, and almost
worthless at a thousand yards.
As he was about to turn over a fresh stone Thor paused in his operations.
For a full minute he stood nearly motionless. Then his head swung slowly,
his nose close to the ground. Very faintly he had caught an exceedingly
pleasing odour. It was so faint that he was afraid of losing it if he
moved. So he stood until he was sure of himself, then he swung his huge
shoulders around and descended two yards down the slope, swinging his head
slowly from right to left, and sniffing. The scent grew stronger. Another
two yards down the slope he found it very strong under a rock. It was a big
rock, and weighed probably two hundred pounds. Thor dragged it aside with
his one right hand as if it were no more than a pebble.
Instantly there was a wild and protesting chatter, and a tiny striped
rock-rabbit, very much like a chipmunk, darted away just as Thor's left
hand came down with a smash that would have broken the neck of a caribou.
It was not the scent of the rock-rabbit, but the savour of what the
rock-rabbit had stored under the stone that had attracted Thor. And this
booty still remained--a half-pint of ground-nuts piled carefully in a
little hollow lined with moss. They were not really nuts. They were more
like diminutive potatoes, about the size of cherries, and very much like
potatoes in appearance. They were starchy and sweet, and fattening. Thor
enjoyed them immensely, rumbling in that curious satisfied way deep down in
his chest as he feasted. And then he resumed his quest.
He did not hear Langdon as the hunter came nearer and nearer up the broken
gully. He did not smell him, for the wind was fatally wrong. He had
forgotten the noxious man-smell that had disturbed and irritated him an
hour before. He was quite happy; he was good-humoured; he was fat and
sleek. An irritable, cross-grained, and quarrelsome bear is always thin.
The true hunter knows him as soon as he sets eyes on him. He is like the
rogue elephant.
Thor continued his food-seeking, edging still closer to the gully. He was
within a hundred and fifty yards of it when a sound suddenly brought him
alert. Langdon, in his effort to creep up the steep side of the gully for a
shot, had accidentally loosened a rock. It went crashing down the ravine,
starting other stones that followed in a noisy clatter. At the foot of the
coulee, six hundred yards down, Bruce swore softly under his breath. He saw
Thor sit up. At that distance he was going to shoot if the bear made for
the break.
For thirty seconds Thor sat on his haunches. Then he started for the
ravine, ambling slowly and deliberately. Langdon, panting and inwardly
cursing at his ill luck, struggled to make the last ten feet to the edge
of the slope. He heard Bruce yell, but he could not make out the warning.
Hands and feet he dug fiercely into shale and rock as he fought to make
those last three or four yards as quickly as possible.
He was almost to the top when he paused for a moment and turned his eyes
upward. His heart went into his throat, and he started. For ten seconds he
could not move. Directly over him was a monster head and a huge hulk of
shoulder. Thor was looking down on him, his jaws agape, his finger-long
fangs snarling, his eyes burning with a greenish-red fire.
In that moment Thor saw his first of man. His great lungs were filled with
the hot smell of him, and suddenly he turned away from that smell as if
from a plague. With his rifle half under him Langdon had had no opportunity
to shoot. Wildly he clambered up the remaining few feet. The shale and
stones slipped and slid under him. It was a matter of sixty seconds before
he pulled himself over the top.
Thor was a hundred yards away, speeding in a rolling, ball-like motion
toward the break. From the foot of the coulee came the sharp crack of
Otto's rifle. Langdon squatted quickly, raising his left knee for a rest,
and at a hundred and fifty yards began firing.
Sometimes it happens that an hour--a minute--changes the destiny of man;
and the ten seconds which followed swiftly after that first shot from the
foot of the coulee changed Thor. He had got his fill of the man-smell. He
had seen man. And now he _felt_ him.
It was as if one of the lightning flashes he had often seen splitting the
dark skies had descended upon him and had entered his flesh like a red-hot
knife; and with that first burning agony of pain came the strange, echoing
roar of the rifles. He had turned up the slope when the bullet struck him
in the fore-shoulder, mushrooming its deadly soft point against his tough
hide, and tearing a hole through his flesh--but without touching the bone.
He was two hundred yards from the ravine when it hit; he was nearer three
hundred when the stinging fire seared him again, this time in his flank.
Neither shot had staggered his huge bulk, twenty such shots would not have
killed him. But the second stopped him, and he turned with a roar of rage
that was like the bellowing of a mad bull--a snarling, thunderous cry of
wrath that could have been heard a quarter of a mile down the valley.
Bruce heard it as he fired his sixth unavailing shot at seven hundred
yards. Langdon was reloading. For fifteen seconds Thor offered himself
openly, roaring his defiance, challenging the enemy he could no longer see;
and then at Langdon's seventh shot, a whiplash of fire raked his back, and
in strange dread of this lightning which he could not fight, Thor continued
up over the break. He heard other rifle shots, which were like a new kind
of thunder. But he was not hit again. Painfully he began the descent into
the next valley.
Thor knew that he was hurt, but he could not comprehend that hurt. Once in
the descent he paused for a few moments, and a little pool of blood dripped
upon the ground under his foreleg. He sniffed at it suspiciously and
wonderingly.
He swung eastward, and a little later he caught a fresh taint of the
man-smell in the air. The wind was bringing it to him now, and in spite of
the fact that he wanted to lie down and nurse his wound he ambled on a
little faster, for he had learned one thing that he would never forget: the
man-smell and his hurt had come together.
He reached the bottoms, and buried himself in the thick timber; and then,
crossing this timber, he came to a creek. Perhaps a hundred times he had
travelled up and down this creek. It was the main trail that led from one
half of his range to the other.
Instinctively he always took this trail when he was hurt or when he was
sick, and also when he was ready to den up for the winter. There was one
chief reason for this: he was born in the almost impenetrable fastnesses at
the head of the creek, and his cubhood had been spent amid its brambles of
wild currants and soap berries and its rich red ground carpets of
kinnikinic. It was home. In it he was alone. It was the one part of his
domain that he held inviolate from all other bears. He tolerated other
bears--blacks and grizzlies--on the wider and sunnier slopes of his range
just so long as they moved on when he approached. They might seek food
there, and nap in the sun-pools, and live in quiet and peace if they did
not defy his suzerainty.
Thor did not drive other bears from his range, except when it was
necessary to demonstrate again that he was High Mogul. This happened
occasionally, and there was a fight. And always after a fight Thor came
into this valley and went up the creek to cure his wounds.
He made his way more slowly than usual to-day. There was a terrible pain in
his fore-shoulder. Now and then it hurt him so that his leg doubled up, and
he stumbled. Several times he waded shoulder-deep into pools and let the
cold water run over his wounds. Gradually they stopped bleeding. But the
pain grew worse.
Thor's best friend in such an emergency was a clay wallow. This was the
second reason why he always took this trail when he was sick or hurt. It
led to the clay wallow. And the clay wallow was his doctor.
The sun was setting before he reached the wallow. His jaws hung open a
little. His great head drooped lower. He had lost a great deal of blood. He
was tired, and his shoulder hurt him so badly that he wanted to tear with
his teeth at the strange fire that was consuming it.
The clay wallow was twenty or thirty feet in diameter, and hollowed into a
little shallow pool in the centre. It was a soft, cool, golden-coloured
clay, and Thor waded into it to his armpits. Then he rolled over gently on
his wounded side. The clay touched his hurt like a cooling salve. It sealed
the cut, and Thor gave a great heaving gasp of relief. For a long time he
lay in that soft bed of clay. The sun went down, darkness came, and the
wonderful stars filled the sky. And still Thor lay there, nursing that
first hurt of man.