Thor heard the dogs when they were a mile away. There were two reasons why
he was even less in a mood to run from them now than a few days before. Of
the dogs alone he had no more fear than if they had been so many badgers,
or so many whistlers piping at him from the rocks. He had found them all
mouth and little fang, and easy to kill. It was what followed close after
them that disturbed him. But to-day he had stood face to face with the
thing that had brought the strange scent into his valleys, and it had not
offered to hurt him, and he had refused to kill it. Besides, he was again
seeking Iskwao, the she-bear, and man is not the only animal that will risk
his life for love.
After killing his last dog at dusk of that fatal day when they had pursued
him over the mountain Thor had done just what Bruce thought that he would
do, and instead of continuing southward had made a wider detour toward the
north, and the third night after the fight and the loss of Muskwa he found
Iskwao again. In the twilight of that same evening Pipoonaskoos had died,
and Thor had heard the sharp cracking of Bruce's automatic. All that night
and the next day and the night that followed he spent with Iskwao, and then
he left her once more. A third time he was seeking her when he found
Langdon in the trap on the ledge, and he had not yet got wind of her when
he first heard the baying of the dogs on his trail.
He was travelling southward, which brought him nearer the hunters' camp. He
was keeping to the high slopes where there were little dips and meadows,
broken by patches of shale, deep coulees, and occasionally wild upheavals
of rock. He was keeping the wind straight ahead so that he would not fail
to catch the smell of Iskwao when he came near her, and with the baying of
the dogs he caught no scent of the pursuing beasts, or of the two men who
were riding behind them.
At another time he would have played his favourite trick of detouring so
that the danger would be ahead of him, with the wind in his favour. Caution
had now become secondary to his desire to find his mate. The dogs were
less than half a mile away when he stopped suddenly, sniffed the air for a
moment, and then went on swiftly until he was halted by a narrow ravine.
Up that ravine Iskwao was coming from a dip lower down the mountain, and
she was running. The yelping of the pack was fierce and close when Thor
scrambled down in time to meet her as she rushed upward. Iskwao paused for
a single moment, smelled noses with Thor, and then went on, her ears laid
back flat and sullen and her throat filled with growling menace.
Thor followed her, and he also growled. He knew that his mate was fleeing
from the dogs, and again that deadly and slowly increasing wrath swept
through him as he climbed after her higher up the mountain.
In such an hour as this Thor was at his worst. He was a fighter when
pursued as the dogs had pursued him a week before--but he was a demon,
terrible and without mercy, when danger threatened his mate.
He fell farther and farther behind Iskwao, and twice lie turned, his fangs
gleaming under drawn lips, and his defiance rolling back upon his enemies
in low thunder.
When he came up out of the coulee he was in the shadow of the peak, and
Iskwao had already disappeared in her skyward scramble. Where she had gone
was a wild chaos of rock-slide and the piled-up débris of fallen and
shattered masses of sandstone crag. The sky-line was not more than three
hundred yards above him. He looked up. Iskwao was among the rocks, and here
was the place to fight. The dogs were close upon him now. They were coming
up the last stretch of the coulee, baying loudly. Thor turned about, and
waited for them.
Half a mile to the south, looking through his glasses, Langdon saw Thor,
and at almost the same instant the dogs appeared over the edge of the
coulee. He had ridden halfway up the mountain; from that point he had
climbed higher, and was following a well-beaten sheep trail at about the
same altitude as Thor. From where he stood the valley lay under his glasses
for miles. He did not have far to look to discover Bruce and the Indian.
They were dismounting at the foot of the coulee, and as he gazed they ran
quickly into it and disappeared.
Again Langdon swung back to Thor. The dogs were holding him now, and he
knew there was no chance of the grizzly killing them in that open space.
Then he saw movement among the rocks higher up, and a low cry of
understanding broke from his lips as he made out Iskwao climbing steadily
toward the ragged peak. He knew that this second bear was a female. The big
grizzly--her mate--had stopped to fight. And there was no hope for him if
the dogs succeeded in holding him for a matter of ten or fifteen minutes.
Bruce and Metoosin would appear in that time over the rim of the coulee at
a range of less than a hundred yards!
Langdon thrust his binoculars in their case and started at a run along the
sheep trail. For two hundred yards his progress was easy, and then the
patch broke into a thousand individual tracks on a slope of soft and
slippery shale, and it took him five minutes to make the next fifty yards.
The trail hardened again. He ran on pantingly, and for another five minutes
the shoulder of a ridge hid Thor and the dogs from him. When he came over
that ridge and ran fifty yards, down the farther side of it, he stopped
short. Further progress was barred by a steep ravine. He was five hundred
yards from where Thor stood with his back to the rocks and his huge head to
the pack.
Even as he looked, struggling to get breath enough to shout, Langdon
expected to see Bruce and Metoosin appear out of the coulee. It flashed
upon him then that even if he could make them hear it would be impossible
for them to understand him. Bruce would not guess that he wanted to spare
the beast they had been hunting for almost two weeks.
Thor had rushed the dogs a full twenty yards toward the coulee when Langdon
dropped quickly behind a rock. There was only one way of saving him now, if
he was not too late. The pack had retreated a few yards down the slope, and
he aimed at the pack. One thought only filled his brain--he must sacrifice
his dogs or let Thor die. And that day Thor had given him his life!
There was no hesitation as he pressed the trigger. It was a long shot, and
the first bullet threw up a cloud of dust fifty feet short of the
Airedales. He fired again, and missed. The third time his rifle cracked
there answered it a sharp yelp of pain which Laagdon himself did not hear.
One of the dogs rolled over and over down the slope.
The reports of the shots alone had not stirred Thor, but now when he saw
one of his enemies crumple up and go rolling down the mountain he turned
slowly toward the safety of the rocks. A fourth and then a fifth shot
followed, and at the fifth the yelping dogs dropped back toward the coulee,
one of them limping with a shattered fore-foot.
Langdon sprang upon the boulder over which he had rested his gun, and his
eyes caught the sky-line. Iskwao had just reached the top. She paused for a
moment and looked down. Then she disappeared.
Thor was now hidden among the boulders and broken masses of sandstone,
following her trail. Within two minutes after the grizzly disappeared Bruce
and Metoosin scrambled up over the edge of the coulee. From where they
stood even the sky-line was within fairly good shooting distance, and
Langdon suddenly began shouting excitedly, waving his arms, and pointing
downward.
Bruce and Metoosin were caught by his ruse, in spite of the fact that the
dogs were again giving fierce tongue close to the rocks among which Thor
had gone. They believed that from where he stood Langdon could see the
progress of the bear, and that it was running toward the valley. Not until
they were another hundred yards down the slope did they stop and look back
at Langdon to get further directions. From his rock Langdon was pointing to
the sky-line.
Thor was just going over. He paused for a moment, as Iskwao had stopped,
and took one last look at man.
And Langdon, as he saw the last of him, waved his hat and shouted, "Good
luck to you, old man--good luck!"