end of the chin.

Before he could rise from where he had fallen the dogs were upon him,
tearing at his throat and neck and body. With a roar Thor sprang to his
feet and shook them off. He struck out savagely, and Langdon and Bruce
could hear his bellowing as they stood with fingers on the triggers of
their rifles waiting for the dogs to draw away far enough to give them the
final shots.

Yard by yard Thor worked his way upward, snarling at the frantic pack,
defying the man-smell, the strange thunder, the burning lightning--even
death itself, and five hundred yards below Langdon cursed despairingly as
the dogs hung so close he could not fire.

Up to the very sky-line the blood-thirsting pack shielded Thor. He
disappeared over the summit. The dogs followed. And after that their baying
came fainter and fainter as the big grizzly led them swiftly away from the
menace of man in a long and thrilling race from which more than one was
doomed not to return.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

In his hiding-place Muskwa heard the last sounds of the battle on the
ledge. The crevice was a V-shaped crack in the rock, and he had wedged
himself as far back in this as he could. He saw Thor pass the opening of
his refuge after he had killed the fourth dog; he heard the click, click,
click of his claws as he retreated up the trail; and at last he knew that
the grizzly was gone, and that the enemy had followed him.

Still he was afraid to come out. These strange pursuers that had come up
out of the valley had filled him with a deadly terror. Pipoonaskoos had not
made him afraid. Even the big black bear that Thor killed had not terrified
him as these red-lipped, white-fanged strangers had frightened him. So he
remained in his crevice, crowded as far back as he could get, like a wad
shoved in a gun-barrel.

He could still hear the tongueing of the dogs when other and nearer sounds
alarmed him. Langdon and Bruce came rushing around the bulge in the
mountain wall, and at sight of the dead dogs they stopped. Langdon cried
out in horror.

He was not more than twenty feet from Muskwa. For the first time the cub
heard human voices; for the first time the sweaty odour of men filled his
nostrils, and he scarcely breathed in his new fear. Then one of the hunters
stood directly in front of the crack in which he was hidden, and he saw his
first man. A moment later the men, too, were gone.

Later Muskwa heard the shots. After that the barking of the d