And the
other valley--his home--lay under Muskwa.
Of course he did not recognize it. He saw and smelled in it nothing that
was familiar. But it was such a beautiful valley, and so abundantly filled
with plenty and sunshine, that he did not hurry through it. He found whole
gardens of spring beauties and dog-tooth violets. And on the third day he
made his first real kill. He almost stumbled over a baby whistler no larger
than a red squirrel, and before the little creature could escape he was
upon it. It made him a splendid feast.
It was fully a week before he passed along the creek-bottom close under the
slope where his mother had died. If he had been travelling along the crest
of the slope he would have found her bones, picked clean by the wild
things. It was another week before he came to the little meadow where Thor
had killed the bull caribou and the big black bear.
And now Muskwa knew that he was home!
For two days he did not travel two hundred yards from the scene of feast
and battle, and night and day he was on the watch for Thor. Then he had to
seek farther for food, but each afternoon when the mountains began to throw
out long shadows he would return to the clump of trees in which they had
made the cache that the black bear robber had despoiled.
One day he went farther than usual in his quest for roots.
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