Half a dozen times during the next two or three hours he visited Muskwa,
and each time that he returned to Bruce he was quieter, as if debating
something with himself.
It was nine o'clock when they came to what was undoubtedly the end of
Thor's valley. A mountain rose up squarely in the face of it, and the
stream they were following swung sharply to the westward into a narrow
canyon. On the east rose a green and undulating slope up which the horses
could easily travel, and which would take the outfit into a new valley in
the direction of the Driftwood. This course Bruce decided to pursue.
Halfway up the slope they stopped to give the horses a breathing spell. In
his cowhide prison Muskwa whimpered pleadingly. Langdon heard, but he
seemed to pay no attention. He was looking steadily back into the valley.
It was glorious in the morning sun. He could see the peaks under which lay
the cool, dark lake in which Thor had fished; for miles the slopes were
like green velvet and there came to him as he looked the last droning music
of Thor's world. It struck him in a curious way as a sort of anthem, a
hymnal rejoicing that he was going, and that he was leaving things as they
were before he came. And yet, _was_ he leaving things as they had been? Did
his ears not catch in that music of the mountains something of sadness, of
grief, of plaintive prayer?
And again, close to him, Muskwa whimpered softly.
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