Muskwa stood up. He was shivering still, but with a new and strange emotion. This was not play, as he and his mother had played. For the first time he was looking upon _battle_, and the thrill of it sent the blood hot and fast through his little body. With a faint, puppyish snarl he darted in. His teeth sank futilely into the thick hair and tough hide of the black's rump. He pulled and he snarled; he braced himself with his forefeet and tugged at his mouthful of hair, filled with a blind and unaccountable rage. The black twisted himself upon his back, and one of his hind feet raked Thor from chest to vent. That stroke would have disembowelled a caribou or a deer; it left a red, open, bleeding wound three feet long on Thor. Before it could be repeated, the grizzly swung himself sidewise, and the second blow caught Muskwa. The flat of the black's foot struck him, and for twenty feet he was sent like a stone out of a sling-shot. He was not cut, but he was stunned. In that same moment Thor released his hold on his enemy's throat, and swung two or three feet to one side. He was dripping blood. The black's shoulders, chest, and neck were saturated with it; huge chunks had been torn from his body. He made an effort to rise, and Thor was on him again. This time Thor got his deadliest of all holds. His great jaws clamped in a death-grip over the upper part of the black's nose. One terrific grinding crunch, and the fight was over. The black could not have lived after that. But this fact Thor did not know. It was now easy for him to rip with those knifelike claws on his hind feet. He continued to maul and tear for ten minutes after the black was dead. When Thor finally quit the scene of battle was terrible to look upon. The ground was torn up and red; it was covered with great strips of black hide and pieces of flesh; and the black, on the under side, was torn open from end to end. Two miles away, tense and white and scarcely breathing as they looked through their glasses, Langdon and Bruce crouched beside a rock on the mountainside. At that distance they had witnessed the terrific spectacle, but they could not see the cub. As Thor stood panting and bleeding over his lifeless enemy, Langdon lowered his glass. "My God!" he breathed. Bruce sprang to his feet. "Come on!" he cried. "The black's dead! If we hustle we can get our grizzly!" And down in the meadow Muskwa ran to Thor with a bit of warm black hide in his mouth, and Thor lowered his great bleeding head, and just once his red tongue shot out and caressed Muskwa's face. For the little tan-faced cub had proved himself; and it may be that Thor had seen and understood. CHAPTER NINE