ere Thor and Iskwao. He was tired and hungry, and he was utterly
lost.

That night he slept in the end of a hollow log. The next day he went on,
and for many days and many nights after that he was alone in the big
valley. He passed close to the pool where Thor and he had met the old bear,
and he nosed hungrily among the fishbones; he skirted the edge of the dark,
deep lake; he saw the shadowy things fluttering in the gloom of the forest
again; he passed over the beaver dam, and he slept for two nights close to
the log-jam from which he had watched Thor throw out their first fish. He
was almost forgetting Langdon now, and was thinking more and more about
Thor and his mother. He wanted them. He wanted them more than he had ever
wanted the companionship of man, for Muskwa was fast becoming a creature of
the wild again.

It was the beginning of August before the cub came to the break in the
valley and climbed up the slope where Thor had first heard the thunder and
had first felt the sting of the white men's guns. In these two weeks Muskwa
had grown rapidly, in spite of the fact that he often went to bed on an
empty stomach; and he was no longer afraid of the dark. Through the deep,
sunless canyon above the clay wallow he went, and as there was only one way
out he came at last to the summit of the break over which Thor had gone,
and over which Langdon and Bruce had followed in close pursuit. And the
other valley--his home--lay under Muskwa.

Of course he did not recognize it. He saw and smelled in it nothing that
was familiar. But it was such a beautiful valley, and so abundantly filled
with plenty and sunshine, that he did not hurry through it. He found whole
gardens of spring beauties and dog-tooth violets. And on the third day he
made his first real kill. He almost stumbled over a baby whistler no larger
than a red squirrel, and before the little creature could escape he was
upon it. It made him a splendid feast.

It was fully a week before he passed along the creek-bottom close under the
slope where his mother had died. If he had been travelling along the crest
of the slope he would have found her bones, picked clean by the wild
things. It was another week before he came to the little meadow where Thor
had killed the bull caribou and the big black bear.

And now Muskwa knew that he was home!

For two days he did not travel two hundred yards from the scene of feast
and battle, and night and day he was on the watch fo