He would not drive the mother-bear and her cubs away, and he would not fight with her, no matter how shrewish or unpleasant she was.

Even if he found them eating at one of his kills, he would do nothing more than give the cubs a sound cuffing.
All this is somewhat necessary to show with what sudden and violent agitation Thor caught a certain warm, close smell as he came around the end of a mass of huge boulders.

He stopped, turned his head, and swore in his low, growling way.

Six feet away from him, grovelling flat in a patch of white sand, wriggling and shaking for all the world like a half-frightened puppy that had not yet made up its mind whether it had met a friend or an enemy, was a lone bear cub.

It was not more than three months old--altogether too young to be away from its mother; and it had a sharp little tan face and a white spot on its baby breast which marked it as a member of the black bear family, and not a grizzly.
The cub was trying as hard as it could to say, "I am lost, strayed, or stolen; I'm hungry, and I've got a porcupine quill in my foot," but in spite of that, with another ominous growl, Thor began to look about the rocks for the mother.