ater he looked down from the top of the slope through his
glasses. He saw Muskwa, a black dot. The cub had stopped, and was waiting
confidently for him to return.

And trying to laugh again, but failing dismally, Langdon rode over the
divide and out of Muskwa's life.

CHAPTER TWENTY

For a good half-mile Muskwa followed over the trail of Langdon. He ran at
first; then he walked; finally he stopped entirely and sat down like a dog,
facing the distant slope. Had Langdon been afoot he would not have halted
until he was tired. But the cub had not liked his pannier prison. He
had been tremendously jostled and bounced about, and twice the horse
that carried him had shaken himself, and those shakings had been like
earthquakes to Muskwa. He knew that the cage as well as Langdon was ahead
of him. He sat for a time and whimpered wistfully, but he went no farther.
He was sure that the friend he had grown to love would return after a
little. He always came back. He had never failed him. So he began to hunt
about for a spring beauty or a dog-tooth violet, and for some time he was
careful not to stray very far away from where the outfit had passed.

All that day the cub remained in the flower-strewn meadows under the
slope; it was very pleasant in the sunshine, and he found more than one
patch of the bulbous roots he liked. He dug, and he filled himself, and he
took a nap in the afternoon; but when the sun began to go down and the
heavy shadows of the mountain darkened the valley he began to grow afraid.

He was still a very small baby of a cub, and only that one dreadful night
after his mother had died had he spent entirely alone. Thor had replaced
mother, and Langdon had taken the place of Thor, so that until now he had
never felt the loneliness and emptiness of darkness. He crawled under a
clump of thorn close to the trail, and continued to wait, and listen, and
sniff expectantly. The stars came out clear and brilliant, but to-night
their lure was not strong enough to call him forth. Not until dawn did he
steal out cautiously from his shelter of thorn.

The sun gave him courage and confidence again and he began wandering back
through the valley, the scent of the horse-trail growing fainter and
fainter until at last it disappeared entirely. That day Muskwa ate some
grass and a few dog-tooth violet roots, and when the second night came he
was abreast of the slope over which the outfit had come from the valley in
which w