The Grizzly King by James Oliver Curwood (read aloud books TXT) 📕

valley west of the range and convinced themselves finally that the "colours" they found were only a part of the flood-drifts, and would not lead to fortune.
On this fourth night, which happened to be thick with clouds, and chilly, Langdon experimented by taking Muskwa to bed with him. He expected trouble. But Muskwa was as quiet as a kitten, and once he found a proper nest for himself he scarcely made a move until morning. A part of the night Langdon slept with one of his hands resting on the cub's soft, warm body.
According to Bruce it was now time to continue the hunt for Thor, but a change for the worse in Langdon's knee broke in upon their plans. It was impossible for Langdon to walk more than a quarter of a mile at a time, and the position he was compelled to take in the saddle caused him so much pain that to prosecute the hunt even on horseback was out of the question.
"A few more days won't hurt any," consoled Bruce. "If we give the old fellow a longer rest he may get a bit careless."
The three days that followed were not without profit and pleasure for Langdon. Muskwa was teaching him more than he had ever known about bears, and especially bear cubs, and he made notes voluminously.
The dogs were now confined to a clump of trees fully three hundred yards from the camp, and gradually the cub was given his freedom. He made no effort to run away, and he soon discovered that Bruce and Metoosin were also his friends. But Langdon was the only one he would follow.
On the morning of the eighth day after their pursuit of Thor, Bruce and Metoosin rode over into the eastward valley with the dogs. Metoosin was to have a day's start, and Bruce planned to return to camp that afternoon so that he and Langdon could begin their hunt up the valley the next day.
It was a glorious morning. A cool breeze came from the north and west, and about nine o'clock Langdon fastened Muskwa to his tree, saddled a horse, and rode down the valley. He had no intention of hunting. It was a joy merely to ride and breathe in the face of that wind and gaze upon the wonders of the mountains.
He travelled northward for three or four miles, until he came to a broad, low slope that broke through the range to the westward. A desire seized upon him to look over into the other valley, and as his knee was giving him no trouble he cut a zigzag course upward that in half an hour brought him almost to the top.
Here he came to a short, steep slide that compelled him to dismount and continue on foot. At the summit he found himself on a level sweep of meadow, shut in on each side of him by the bare rock walls of the split mountains, and a quarter of a mile ahead he could see where the meadow broke suddenly into the slope that shelved downward into the valley he was seeking.
Halfway over this quarter of a mile of meadow there was a dip into which he could not see, and as he came to the edge of this he flung himself suddenly upon his face and for a minute or two lay as motionless as a rock. Then he slowly raised his head.
A hundred yards from him, gathered about a small water-hole in the hollow, was a herd of goats. There were thirty or more, most of them Nannies with young kids. Langdon could make out only two Billies in the lot. For half an hour he lay still and watched them. Then one of the Nannies struck out with her two kids for the side of the mountain; another followed, and seeing that the whole band was about to move, Langdon rose quickly to his feet and ran as fast as he could toward them.
For a moment Nannies, Billies, and little kids were paralyzed by his sudden appearance. They faced half about and stood as if without the power of flight until he had covered half the distance between t hem. Then their wits seemed to return all at once, and they broke in a wild panic for the side of the nearest mountain. Their hoofs soon began to clatter on boulder and shale, and for another half-hour Langdon heard the hollow booming of the rocks loosened by their feet high up among the crags and peaks. At the end of that time they were infinitesimal white dots on the sky-line.
He went on, and a few minutes later looked down into the other valley. Southward this valley was shut out from his vision by a huge shoulder of rock. It was not very high, and he began to climb it. He had almost reached the top when his toe caught in a piece of slate, and in falling he brought his rifle down with tremendous force on a boulder.
He was not hurt, except for a slight twinge in his lame knee. But his gun was a wreck. The stock was shattered close to the breech and a twist of his hand broke it off entirely.
As he carried two extra rifles in his outfit the mishap did not disturb Langdon as much as it might otherwise have done, and he continued to climb over the rocks until he came to what appeared to be a broad, smooth ledge leading around the sandstone spur of the mountain. A hundred feet farther on he found that the ledge ended in a perpendicular wall of rock. From this point, however, he had a splendid view of the broad sweep of country between the two ranges to the south. He sat down, pulled out his pipe, and prepared to enjoy the magnificent panorama under him while he was getting his wind.
Through his glasses he could see for miles, and what he looked upon was an unhunted country. Scarcely half a mile away a band of caribou was filing slowly across the bottom toward the green slopes to the west. He caught the glint of many ptarmigan wings in the sunlight below. After a time, fully two miles away, he saw sheep grazing on a thinly verdured slide.
He wondered how many valleys there were like this in the vast reaches of the Canadian mountains that stretched three hundred miles from sea to prairie and a thousand miles north and south. Hundreds, even thousands, he told himself, and each wonderful valley a world complete within itself; a world filled with its own life, its own lakes and streams and forests, its own joys and its own tragedies.
Here in this valley into which he gazed was the same soft droning and the same warm sunshine that had filled all the other valleys; and yet here, also, was a different life. Other bears ranged the slopes that he could see dimly with his naked eyes far to the west and north. It was a new domain, filled with other promise and other mystery, and he forgot time and hunger as he sat lost in the enchantment of it.
It seemed to Langdon that these hundreds or thousands of valleys would never grow old for him; that he could wander on for all time, passing from one into another, and that each would possess its own charm, its own secrets to be solved, its own life to be learned. To him they were largely inscrutable; they were cryptic, as enigmatical as life itself, hiding their treasures as they droned through the centuries, giving birth to multitudes of the living, demanding in return other multitudes of the dead. As he looked off through the sunlit space he wondered what the story of this valley would be, and how many volumes it would fill, if the valley itself could tell it.
First of all, he knew, it would whisper of the creation of a world; it would tell of oceans torn and twisted and thrown aside--of those first strange eons of time when there was no night, but all was day; when weird and tremendous monsters stalked where he now saw the caribou drinking at the creek, and when huge winged creatures half bird and half beast swept the sky where he now saw an eagle soaring.
And then it would tell of The Change--of that terrific hour when the earth tilted on its axis, and night came, and a tropical world was turned into a frigid one, and new kinds of life were born to fill it.
It must have been long after that, thought Langdon, that the first bear came to replace the mammoth, the mastodon, and the monstrous beasts that had been their company. And that first bear was the forefather of the grizzly he and Bruce were setting forth to kill the next day!
So engrossed was Langdon in his thoughts that he did not hear a sound behind him. And then something roused him.
It was as if one of the monsters he had been picturing in his imagination had let out a great breath close to him. He turned slowly, and the next moment his heart seemed to stop its beating; his blood seemed to grow cold and lifeless in his veins.
Barring the ledge not more than fifteen feet from him, his great jaws agape, his head moving slowly from side to side as he regarded his trapped enemy, stood Thor, the King of the Mountains!
And in that space of a second or two Langdon's hands involuntarily gripped at his broken rifle, and he decided that he was doomed!


CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
A broken, choking breath--a stifled sound that was scarcely a cry--was all that came from Langdon's lips as he saw the monstrous grizzly looking at him. In the ten seconds that followed he lived hours.
His first thought was that he was powerless--utterly powerless. He could not even run, for the rock wall was behind him; he could not fling himself valleyward, for there was a sheer fall of a hundred feet on that side. He was face to face with death, a death as terrible as that which had overtaken the dogs.
And yet in these last moments Langdon did not lose himself in terror. He noted even the redness in the avenging grizzly's eyes. He saw the naked scat along his back where one of his bullets had plowed; he saw the bare spot where another of his bullets had torn its way through Thor's fore-shoulder. And he believed, as he observed these things, that Thor had deliberately trailed him, that the bear had followed him along the ledge and had cornered him here that he might repay in full measure what had been inflicted upon him.
Thor advanced--just one step; and then in that slow, graceful movement, reared himself to full height. Langdon, even then, thought that he was magnificent. On his part, the man did not move; he looked steadily up at Thor, and he had made up his mind what to do when the great beast lunged forward. He would fling himself over the edge. Down below there was one chance in a thousand for life. There might be a ledge or a projecting spur to catch him.
And Thor!
Suddenly--unexpectedly--he had come upon man! This was the creature that had hunted him, this was the creature that had hurt him--and it was so near that he could reach out with his paw and crush it! And how weak, and white, and shrinking it looked now! Where was its strange thunder? Where was its burning lightning? Why did it make no sound?
Even a dog would have done more than this creature, for the dog would have shown its fangs; it would have snarled, it would have fought.