Vainly his slow-working brute mind struggled to comprehend it.
It was not caribou, for he had killed many caribou; it was not goat; it was not sheep; and it was not the smell of the fat and lazy whistlers sunning themselves on the rocks, for he had eaten hundreds of whistlers.

It was a scent that did not enrage him, and neither did it frighten him.

He was curious, and yet he did not go down to seek it out.

Caution held him back.
If Thor could have seen distinctly for a mile, or two miles, his eyes would have discovered even less than the wind brought to him from down the valley.

He stood at the edge of a little plain, with the valley an eighth of a mile below him, and the break over which he had come that afternoon an eighth of a mile above him.