To this height, midway between the meadows in the valley and the first shale and bare rock of the peaks, he came most frequently on his small game hunts.
Like fat woodchucks the whistlers were already beginning to sun themselves on their rocks.

Their long, soft, elusive whistlings, pleasant to hear above the drone of mountain waters, filled the air with a musical cadence.
Now and then one would whistle shrilly and warningly close at hand, and then flatten himself out on his rock as the big bear passed, and for a few moments no whistling would break upon the gentle purring of the valley.
But Thor was giving no thought to the hunt this morning.

Twice he encountered porcupines, the sweetest of all morsels to him, and passed them unnoticed; the warm, _sleeping_ smell of a caribou came hot and fresh from a thicket, but he did not approach the thicket to investigate; out of a coulee, narrow and dark, like a black ditch, he caught the scent of a badger.

For two hours he travelled steadily northward along the half-crest of the slopes before he struck down through the timber to the stream.
The clay adhering to his wound was beginning to harden, and again he waded shoulder-deep into a pool, and stood there for several minutes.

The water washed most of the clay away.