of his enemy's
shoulder. At the same time he struck a terrific cutting stroke with his
left paw.

Thor was a digger, and his claws were dulled; the black was not a digger,
but a tree-climber, and his claws were like knives. And like knives they
buried themselves in Thor's wounded shoulder, and the blood spurted forth
afresh.

With a roar that seemed to set the earth trembling, the huge grizzly lunged
backward and reared himself to his full nine feet. He had given the black
warning. Even after their first tussle his enemy might have retreated and
he would not have pursued. Now it was a fight to the death! The black had
done more than ravage his cache. He had opened the man-wound!

A minute before Thor had been fighting for law and right--without great
animosity or serious desire to kill. Now, however, he was terrible. His
mouth was open, and it was eight inches from jaw to jaw; his lips were
drawn up until his white teeth and his red gums were bared; muscles stood
out like cords on his nostrils, and between his eyes was a furrow like the
cleft made by an axe in the trunk of a pine. His eyes shone with the glare
of red garnets, their greenish-black pupils almost obliterated by the
ferocious fire that was in them. Man, facing Thor in this moment, would
have known that only one would come out alive.

Thor was not a "stand-up" fighter. For perhaps six or seven seconds he
remained erect, but as the black advanced a step he dropped quickly to all
fours.

The black met him halfway, and after this--for many minutes--Muskwa hugged
closer and closer to the earth while with gleaming eyes he watched the
battle. It was such a fight as only the jungles and the mountains see, and
the roar of it drifted up and down the valley.

Like human creatures the two giant beasts used their powerful forearms
while with fangs and hind feet they ripped and tore. For two minutes they
were in a close and deadly embrace, both rolling on the ground, now one
under and then the other. The black clawed ferociously; Thor used chiefly
his teeth and his terrible right hind foot. With his forearms he made no
effort to rend the black, but used them to hold and throw his enemy. He was
fighting to get _under_, as he had flung himself under the caribou he had
disembowelled.

Again and again Thor buried his long fangs in the other's flesh; but in
fang-fighting the black was even quicker than he, and his right shoulder
was being literally torn to pieces when