The big grizzly answered the question. He turned along the rock shelf and
began descending into the valley. Muskwa tagged behind, just as he had
followed the day before. The cub felt twice as big and fully twice as
strong as yesterday, and he no longer was obsessed by that uncomfortable
yearning for his mother's milk. Thor had graduated him quickly, and he was
a meat-eater. And he knew they were returning to where they had feasted
last night.
They had descended half the distance of the slope when the wind brought
something to Thor. A deep-chested growl rolled out of him as he stopped for
a moment, the thick ruff about his neck bristling ominously. The scent he
had caught came from the direction of his cache, and it was an odour which
he was not in a humour to tolerate in this particular locality. Strongly he
smelled the presence of another bear. This would not have excited him under
ordinary conditions, and it would not have excited him now had the presence
been that of a female bear. But the scent was that of a he-bear, and it
drifted strongly up a rock-cut ravine that ran straight down toward the
balsam patch in which he had hidden the caribou.
Thor stopped to ask himself no questions. Growling under his breath, he
began to descend so swiftly that Muskwa had great difficulty in keeping up
with him.
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