The grizzly king

by James Oliver Curwood

For several hours after their dinner they lay in a cool, hidden spot close to the log-jam. Muskwa did not sleep soundly. He was beginning to understand that life was now largely a matter of personal responsibility with him, and his ears had begun to attune themselves to sound. Whenever Thor moved or heaved a deep sigh, Muskwa knew it. After that day's Marathon with the grizzly he was filled with uneasiness—a fear that he might lose his big friend and food-killer, and he was determined that the parent he had adopted should have no opportunity of slipping away from him unheard and unseen. But Thor had no intention of deserting his little comrade. In fact, he was becoming quite fond of Muskwa.

It was not alone his hunger for fish or fear of his enemies that was bringing Thor into the lower country of the Babine waterways. For a week past there had been in him a steadily growing unrest, and it had reached its climax in these last two or three days of battle and flight. He was filled with a strange and unsatisfied yearning, and as Muskwa napped in his little bed among the bushes Thor's ears were keenly alert for certain sounds and his nose frequently sniffed the air. He wanted a mate. It was puskoowepesim—the "moulting moon"—and always in this moon, or the end of the "egg-laying moon," which was June, he hunted for the female that came to him from the western ranges. He was almost entirely a creature of habit, and always he made this particular detour, entering the other valley again far down toward the Babine. He never failed to feed on fish along the way, and the more fish he ate the stronger was the odour of him. It is barely possible Thor had discovered that this perfume of golden-spotted trout made him more attractive to his lady-love. Anyway, he ate fish, and he smelled abundantly.

Thor rose and stretched himself two hours before sunset, and he knocked three more fish out of the water. Muskwa ate the head of one and Thor finished the rest. Then they continued their pilgrimage.

It was a new world that Muskwa entered now. In it there were none of the old familiar sounds. The purring drone of the upper valley was gone. There were no whistlers, and no ptarmigan, and no fat little gophers running about. The water of the lake lay still, and dark, and deep, with black and sunless pools hiding themselves under the roots of trees, so close did the forest cling to it. There were no rocks to climb over, but dank, soft logs, thick windfalls, and litters of brush. The air was different, too. It was very still. Under their feet at times was a wonderful carpet of soft moss in which Thor sank nearly to his armpits. And the forest was filled with a strange gloom and many mysterious shadows, and there hung heavily in it the pungent smells of decaying vegetation.

Thor did not travel so swiftly here. The silence and the gloom and the oppressively scented air seemed to rouse his caution. He stepped quietly; frequently he stopped and looked about him, and listened; he smelled at the edges of pools hidden under the roots; every new sound brought him to a stop, his head hung low and his ears alert.

Several times Muskwa saw shadowy things floating through the gloom. They were the big gray owls that turned snow white in winter. And once, when it was almost dark, they came upon a pop-eyed, loose-jointed, fierce-looking creature in the trail who scurried away like a ball at sight of Thor. It was a lynx.

It was not yet quite dark when Thor came out very quietly into a clearing, and Muskwa found himself first on the shore of a creek, and then close to a big pond. The air was full of the breath and warmth of a new kind of life. It was not fish, and yet it seemed to come from the pond, in the centre of which were three or four circular masses that looked like great brush-heaps plastered with a coating of mud.

Whenever he came into this end of the valley Thor always paid a visit to the beaver colony, and occasionally he helped himself to a fat young beaver for supper or breakfast. This evening he was not hungry, and he was in a hurry. In spite of these two facts he stood for some minutes in the shadows near the pond.

The beavers had already begun their night's work. Muskwa soon understood the significance of the shimmering streaks that ran swiftly over the surface of the water. At the end of each streak was always a dark, flat head, and now he saw that most of these streaks began at the farther edge of the pond and made directly for a long, low barrier that shut in the water a hundred yards to the east.

This particular barrier was strange to Thor, and with his maturer knowledge of beaver ways he knew that his engineering friends—whom he ate only occasionally—were broadening their domain by building a new dam. As they watched, two fat workmen shoved a four-foot length of log into the pond with a big splash, and one of them began piloting it toward the scene of building operations, while his companion returned to other work. A little later there was a crash in the timber on the opposite side of the pond, where another workman had succeeded in felling a tree. Then Thor made his way toward the dam.