Between these two lines of forest lay the open valley of soft and
undulating meadow, dotted with its purplish bosks of buffalo willow and
mountain sage, its green coppices of wild-rose and thorn, and its clumps
of trees. In the hollow of the valley ran a stream.

Thor descended about four hundred yards from where he stood, and then
turned northward along the green slope, so that he was travelling from
patch to patch of the parklike timber, a hundred and fifty or two hundred
yards above the fringe of forest. To this height, midway between the
meadows in the valley and the first shale and bare rock of the peaks, he
came most frequently on his small game hunts.

Like fat woodchucks the whistlers were already beginning to sun themselves
on their rocks. Their long, soft, elusive whistlings, pleasant to hear
above the drone of mountain waters, filled the air with a musical cadence.
Now and then one would whistle shrilly and warningly close at hand, and
then flatten himself out on his rock as the big bear passed, and for a few
moments no whistling would break upon the gentle purring of the valley.

But Thor was giving no thought to the hunt this morning. Twice he
encountered porcupines, the sweetest of all morsels to him, and passed them
unnoticed; the warm, _sleeping_ smell of a caribou came hot and fresh from
a thicket, but he did not approach the thicket to investigate; out of a
coulee, narrow and dark, like a black ditch, he caught the scent of a
badger. For two hours he travelled steadily northward along the half-crest
of the slopes before he struck down through the timber to the stream.

The clay adhering to his wound was beginning to harden, and again he waded
shoulder-deep into a pool, and stood there for several minutes. The water
washed most of the clay away. For another two hours he followed the creek,