As he stood waiting for Muskwa to get his wind they both heard
an odd chuckling sound approaching them from above. Forty or fifty feet up
the slide the path twisted and descended a little depression behind a huge
boulder, and out from behind this boulder came a big porcupine.
There is a law throughout the North that a man shall not kill a porcupine.
He is the "lost man's friend," for the wandering and starving prospector or
hunter can nearly always find a porcupine, if nothing else; and a child can
kill him. He is the humourist of the wilderness--the happiest, the
best-natured, and altogether the mildest-mannered beast that ever drew
breath. He talks and chatters and chuckles incessantly, and when he travels
he walks like a huge animated pincushion; he is oblivious of everything
about him as though asleep.
As this particular "porky" advanced upon Muskwa and Thor, he was communing
happily with himself, the chuckling notes he made sounding very much like a
baby's cooing. He was enormously fat, and as he waddled slowly along his
side and tail quills clicked on the stones. His eyes were on the path at
his feet. He was deeply absorbed in nothing at all, and he was within five
feet of Thor before he saw the grizzly. Then, in a wink, he humped himself
into a ball. For a few seconds he scolded vociferously.
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