about three o'clock
It was not the sort of hunger to be appeased by ants and grubs , or even gophers and whistlers . It may be , too , that he guessed how nearly starved little Muskwa was . The cub had not once opened his eyes , and he still lay in his warm pool of sunshine when Thor made up his mind to go on . It was about three o'clock , a particularly quiet and drowsy part of a late June or early July day in a northern mountain valley . The whistlers had piped until they were tired , and lay squat out in the sunshine on their rocks ; the eagles soared so high above the peaks that they were mere dots ; the hawks , with meat-filled crops , had disappeared into the timber ; goat and sheep were lying down far up toward the sky-line , and if there were any grazing animals near they were well fed and napping . The mountain hunter knew that this was the hour when he should scan the green slopes and the open places between the clumps of timber for bears , and especially for flesh-eating bears . It was Thor 's chief prospecting hour .