morning feed, an' that's what
happened! There's yo'r story, Jimmy."

"And--he may come back again?" asked Langdon.

"Not on your life, he won't!" cried Bruce. "He wouldn't touch that carcass
ag'in if he was starving. Just now this place is like poison to him."

After that Bruce left Langdon to meditate alone on the field of battle
while he began trailing Thor. In the shade of the balsams Langdon wrote for
a steady hour, frequently rising to establish new facts or verify others
already discovered. Meanwhile the mountaineer made his way foot by foot up
the coulee. Thor had left no blood, but where others would have seen
nothing Bruce detected the signs of his passing. When he returned to where
Langdon was completing his notes, his face wore a look of satisfaction.

"He went over the mount'in," he said briefly.

It was noon before they climbed over the volcanic quarry of rock and
followed the Bighorn Highway to the point where Thor and Muskwa had watched
the eagle and the sheep. They ate their lunch here, and scanned the valley
through their glasses. Bruce was silent for a long time. Then he lowered
his telescope, and turned to Langdon.

"I guess I've got his range pretty well figgered out," he said. "He runs
these two valleys, an' we've got our camp too far south. See that timber
down there? That's where our camp should be. What do you say to goin' back
over the divide with our horses an' moving up here?"

"And leave our grizzly until to-morrow?"

Bruce nodded.

"We can't go after 'im and leave our horses tied up in the creek-bottom
back there."

Langdon boxed his glasses and rose to his feet. Suddenly he grew rigid.

"What was that?"

"I didn't hear anything," said Bruce.

For a moment they stood side by side, listening. A gust of wind whistled
about their ears. It died away.

"Hear it!" whispered Langdon, and his voice was filled with a sudden
excitement.

"The dogs!" cried Bruce.

"Yes, the dogs!"

They leaned forward, their ears turned to the south, and faintly there came
to them the distant, thrilling tongue of the Airedales!

Metoosin had come, and he was seeking them in the valley!

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Thor was on what the Indians call a _pimootao_. His brute mind had all at
once added two and two together, and while perhaps he did not make four of
it, his mental arithmetic was accurate enough to convince him that straight
north was the road to travel.

By the time Langdon and Bruce h