plashes of red and white and
purple, and everything that had life was singing--the fat whistlers on
their rocks, the pompous little gophers on their mounds, the big bumblebees
that buzzed from flower to flower, the hawks in the valley, and the eagles
over the peaks. Even Thor was singing in his way, for as he had paddled
through the soft mud a few minutes before he had rumbled curiously deep
down in his great chest. It was not a growl or a roar or a snarl; it was
the noise he made when he was contented. It was his song.

And now, for some mysterious reason, there had suddenly come a change in
this wonderful day for him. Motionless he still sniffed the wind. It
puzzled him. It disquieted him without alarming him. To the new and strange
smell that was in the air he was as keenly sensitive as a child's tongue to
the first sharp touch of a drop of brandy. And then, at last, a low and
sullen growl came like a distant roll of thunder from out of his chest. He
was overlord of these domains, and slowly his brain told him that there
should be no smell which he could not comprehend, and of which he was not
the master.

Thor reared up slowly, until the whole nine feet of him rested on his
haunches, and he sat like a trained dog, with his great forefeet, heavy
with mud, drooping in front of his chest. For ten years he had lived in
these mountains and never had he smelled that smell. He defied it. He
waited for it, while it came stronger and nearer. He did not hide himself.
Clean-cut and unafraid, he stood up.

He was a monster in size, and his new June coat shone a golden brown in the
sun. His forearms were almost as large as a man's body; the three largest
of his five knifelike claws were five and a half inches long; in the mud
his feet had left tracks that were fifteen inches from tip to tip. He was
fat, and sleek, and powerful. His eyes, no larger than hickory nuts, were
eight inches apart. His two upper fangs, sharp as stiletto points, were as
long as a man's thumb, and between his great jaws he could crush the neck
of a caribou.

Thor's life had been free of the presence of man, and he was not ugly. Like
most grizzlies, he did not kill for the pleasure of killing. Out of a herd
he would take one caribou, and he would eat that caribou to the marrow in
the last bone. He was a peaceful king. He had one law: "Let me alone!" he
said, and the voice of that law was in his attitude as he sat on his
haunches sniffing the strange sme