l of warning, and the badger scooted back up the trail in
fear of his life.

Meanwhile Porky lumbered slowly along in quest of new feeding-grounds,
talking and singing to himself, forgetting entirely what had happened a
minute or two before, and unconscious of the fact that Thor had saved him
from a death as certain as though he had fallen over a thousand-foot
precipice.

For nearly a mile Thor and Muskwa followed the Bighorn Highway before its
winding course brought them at last to the very top of the range. They were
fully three-quarters of a mile above the creek-bottom, and so narrow in
places was the crest of the mountain along which the sheep-trail led that
they could look down into both valleys.

To Muskwa it was all a greenish golden haze below him; the depths seemed
illimitable; the forest along the stream was only a black streak, and the
parklike clumps of balsams and cedars on the farther slopes looked like
very small bosks of thorn or buffalo willow.

Up here the wind was blowing, too. It whipped him with a strange
fierceness, and half a dozen times he felt the mysterious and very
unpleasant chill of snow under his feet. Twice a great bird swooped near
him. It was the biggest bird he had ever seen--an eagle. The second time it
came so near that he heard the _beat_ of it, and saw its great, fierce head
and lowering talons.

Thor whirled toward the eagle and growled. If Muskwa had been alone, the
cub would have gone sailing off in those murderous talons. As it was, the
third time the eagle circled it was down the slope from them. It was after
other game. The scent of the game came to Thor and Muskwa, and they
stopped.

Perhaps a hundred yards below them was a shelving slide of soft shale, and
on this shale, basking in the warm sun after their morning's feed lower
down, was a band of sheep. There were twenty or thirty of them, mostly ewes
and their lambs. Three huge old rams were lying on a patch of snow farther
to the east.

With his six-foot wings spread out like twin fans, the eagle continued to
circle. He was as silent as a feather floating with the wind. The ewes and
even the old bighorns were unconscious of his presence over them. Most of
the lambs were lying close to their mothers, but two or three of a livelier
turn of mind were wandering over the shale and occasionally hopping about
in playful frolic.

The eagle's fierce eyes were upon these youngsters. Suddenly he drifted
farther away--a full