ad reached the summit of the Bighorn
Highway, and were listening to the distant tongueing of the dogs, little
Muskwa was in abject despair. Following Thor had been like a game of tag
with never a moment's rest.

An hour after they left the sheep trail they came to the rise in the valley
where the waters separated. From this point one creek flowed southward into
the Tacla Lake country and the other northward into the Babine, which was a
tributary of the Skeena. They descended very quickly into a much lower
country, and for the first time Muskwa encountered marshland, and travelled
at times through grass so rank and thick that he could not see but could
only hear Thor forging on ahead of him.

The stream grew wider and deeper, and in places they skirted the edges of
dark, quiet pools that Muskwa thought must have been of immeasurable depth.
These pools gave Muskwa his first breathing-spells. Now and then Thor would
stop and sniff over the edge of them. He was hunting for something, and yet
he never seemed to find it; and each time that he started on afresh Muskwa
was so much nearer to the end of his endurance.

They were fully seven miles north of the point from which Bruce and Langdon
were scanning the valley through their glasses when they came to a lake. It
was a dark and unfriendly looking lake to Muskwa, who had never seen
anything but sunlit pools in the dips. The forest grew close down to its
shore. In places it was almost black. Queer birds squawked in the thick
reeds. It was heavy with a strange odour--a fragrance of something that
made the cub lick his little chops, and filled him with hunger.

For a minute or two Thor stood sniffing this scent that filled the air. It
was the smell of fish.

Slowly the big grizzly began picking his way along the edge of the lake.
He soon came to the mouth of a small creek. It was not more than twenty
feet wide, but it was dark and quiet and deep, like the lake itself. For a
hundred yards Thor made his way up this creek, until he came to where a
number of trees had fallen across it, forming a jam. Close to this jam the
water was covered with a green scum. Thor knew what lay under that scum,
and very quietly he crept out on the logs.

Midway in the stream he paused, and with his right paw gently brushed back
the scum so that an open pool of clear water lay directly under him.

Muskwa's bright little eyes watched him from the shore. He knew that Thor
was after something to ea