inute--changes the destiny of man;
and the ten seconds which followed swiftly after that first shot from the
foot of the coulee changed Thor. He had got his fill of the man-smell. He
had seen man. And now he _felt_ him.

It was as if one of the lightning flashes he had often seen splitting the
dark skies had descended upon him and had entered his flesh like a red-hot
knife; and with that first burning agony of pain came the strange, echoing
roar of the rifles. He had turned up the slope when the bullet struck him
in the fore-shoulder, mushrooming its deadly soft point against his tough
hide, and tearing a hole through his flesh--but without touching the bone.
He was two hundred yards from the ravine when it hit; he was nearer three
hundred when the stinging fire seared him again, this time in his flank.

Neither shot had staggered his huge bulk, twenty such shots would not have
killed him. But the second stopped him, and he turned with a roar of rage
that was like the bellowing of a mad bull--a snarling, thunderous cry of
wrath that could have been heard a quarter of a mile down the valley.

Bruce heard it as he fired his sixth unavailing shot at seven hundred
yards. Langdon was reloading. For fifteen seconds Thor offered himself
openly, roaring his defiance, challenging the enemy he could no longer see;
and then at Langdon's seventh shot, a whiplash of fire raked his back, and
in strange dread of this lightning which he could not fight, Thor continued
up over the break. He heard other rifle shots, which were like a new kind
of thunder. But he was not hit again. Painfully he began the descent into
the next valley.

Thor knew that he was hurt, but he could not comprehend that hurt. Once in
the descent he paused for a few moments, and a little pool of blood dripped
upon the ground under his foreleg. He sniffed at it suspiciously and
wonderingly.

He swung eastward, and a little later he caught a fresh taint of the
man-smell in the air. The wind was bringing it to him now, and in spite of
the fact that he wanted to lie down and nurse his wound he ambled on a
little faster, for he had learned one thing that he would never forget: the
man-smell and his hurt had come together.

He reached the bottoms, and buried himself in the thick timber; and then,
crossing this timber, he came to a creek. Perhaps a hundred times he had
travelled up and down this creek. It was the main trail that led from one
half of his range to the o