His belly comfortably full, Toklo settled down in the shade at the edge of the trees and snoozed with his nose on his paws. A grunt roused him; blinking, he raised his head to see another brown bear nosing its way out of the trees a few bearlengths away. It was a young male, a bit smaller than Toklo, with powerful muscles and a frosting of gold on the surface of its fur. So far it hadn’t seen him.

‘Hey!’ Toklo growled, standing up. ‘What are you doing here?’

The other bear whipped round. His fur bristled. ‘Why do you want to know?’

‘This is my territory,’ Toklo told him. ‘Didn’t you see the clawmarks?’

The other bear huffed scornfully. ‘What, those little scratches? I thought they were made by a ground squirrel.’

A tide of fury started to mount inside Toklo. My clawmarks are strong and powerful!

‘I think you must be blind,’ he snarled. ‘You can’t see what’s in front of your snout.’

‘You’re blind yourself if you think your clawmarks will scare me!’ the newcomer retorted.

‘Watch it!’ Toklo took a pace forward. ‘Get out of here or I’ll rip your miserable pelt off.’

‘You can try.’ The other bear showed his teeth. ‘Where did you come from, anyway?’

‘That doesn’t matter.’ Toklo padded forward until he stood nose to nose with the stranger. ‘I’m here now.’

‘And so am I. I didn’t climb all the way up this ridge to go back because some ground squirrel tells me to.’

Toklo swiped a paw through the air, close enough to ruffle the other bear’s fur. ‘This is my territory,’ he snarled.

‘Oh yeah?’ Anger flared up in the newcomer’s eyes. ‘Actually, I think it’s mine.’

With a roar of fury, Toklo reared up on his hind legs and fell on to the other bear, carrying him off his paws and rolling him in the grass. The other bear fought back fiercely, fastening his teeth into Toklo’s shoulder until Toklo had to break away, panting.

The two bears circled each other, low growls coming from their throats. Then the other bear darted in, gave Toklo a nip on the leg, and jumped back before Toklo could respond.

With another roar Toklo leaped at the newcomer. He remembered his fight against Shoteka on the island in Great Bear Lake. This young brown bear was so much smaller, it should have been much easier to defeat him. Instead Toklo found that he couldn’t use his speed and nimble size against the clumsy strength of his opponent because the stranger was just as fast as he was.

Toklo found himself fighting desperately with teeth and claws, trading bites and slashes with the intruder. He struggled to keep his footing on the loose stones that rolled beneath his hindpaws.