But he could hear him and smell him.
Muskwa was having a hard time of it.

His fat little body and his fat little legs were unaccustomed to this sort of journeying, but he was a game youngster, and only twice did he whimper in that half-hour--once he toppled off a rock into the edge of the creek, and again when he came down too hard on the porcupine quill in his foot.
At last Thor abandoned the creek and turned up a deep ravine, which he followed until he came to a dip, or plateau-like plain, halfway up a broad slope.

Here he found a rock on the sunny side of a grassy knoll, and stopped.

It may be that little Muskwa's babyish friendship, the caress of his soft little red tongue at just the psychological moment, and his perseverance in following Thor had all combined to touch a responsive chord in the other's big brute heart, for after nosing about restlessly for a few moments Thor stretched himself out beside the rock.

Not until then did the utterly exhausted little tan-faced cub lie down, but when he did lie down he was so dead tired that he was sound asleep in three minutes.
Twice again during the early part of the afternoon the _sapoos oowin_ worked on Thor, and he began to feel hungry.