Ten years before Thor's mother had gone in there to sleep through the
winter, and when she waddled out to get her first glimpse of spring three
little cubs waddled with her. Thor was one of them. He was still half
blind, for it is five weeks after a grizzly cub is born before he can see;
and there was not much hair on his body, for a grizzly cub is born as naked
as a human baby. His eyes open and his hair begins to grow at just about
the same time. Since then Thor had denned eight times in that cavern home.

He wanted to go in now. He wanted to lie down in the far end of it and wait
until he felt better. For perhaps two or three minutes he hesitated,
sniffing yearningly at the door to his cave, and then feeling the wind from
down the gorge. Something told him that he should go on.

To the westward there was a sloping ascent up out of the gorge to the
summit, and Thor climbed this. The sun was well up when he reached the top,
and for a little while he rested again and looked down on the other half of
his domain.

Even more wonderful was this valley than the one into which Bruce and
Langdon had ridden a few hours before. From range to range it was a good
two miles in width, and in the opposite directions it stretched away in a
great rolling panorama of gold and green and black. From where Thor stood
it was like an immense park. Green slopes reached almost to the summits of
the mountains, and to a point halfway up these slopes--the last
timber-line--clumps of spruce and balsam trees were scattered over the
green as if set there by the hands of men. Some of these timber-patches
were no larger than the decorative clumps in a city park, and others
covered acres and tens of acres; and at the foot of the slopes on either
side, like decorative fringes, were thin and unbroken lines of forest.