ild
animals--he had dreamed again the dream that could never come true. I
was riding with my face to the keen, sweet winds of the wild, and he was
gone. No joy in life is ever perfect. I wondered if any grief was ever
wholly hopeless.

I came at length to a section of rim where huge timbered steps reached
out and down. Dismounting I tied Stockings, and descended to the craggy
points below, where I clambered here and there, looking, listening. No
longer could I locate the hounds; now the baying sounded clear and
sharp, close at hand, and then hollow and faint, and far away. I crawled
under gnarled cedars, over jumbles of rock, around leaning crags, until
I got out to a point where I had such command of slopes and capes, where
the scene was so grand that I was both thrilled and awed. Somewhere
below me to my left were the hounds still baying. The lower reaches of
the rim consisted of ridges and gorges, benches and ravines, canyons and
promontories--a country so wild and broken that it seemed impossible for
hounds to travel it, let alone men. Above me, to my right, stuck out a
yellow point of rim, and beyond that I knew there jutted out another
point, and more and more points on toward the west. George was yelling
from one of them, and I thought I heard a faint reply from R.C. or
Copple. I believed for the present they were too far westward along the
rim, and so I devoted my attention to the slopes under me toward my
left. But once my gaze wandered around, and suddenly I espied a shiny
black object moving along a bare slope, far below. A bear! So thrilled
and excited was I that I did not wonder why this bear walked along so
leisurely and calmly. Assuredly he had not even heard the hounds. I
began to shoot, and in five rapid shots I spattered dust all over him.
Not until I had two more shots, one of which struck close, did he begin
to run. Then he got out of my sight. I yelled and yelled to those ahead
of me along the rim. Somebody answered, and next somebody began to
shoot. How I climbed and crawled and scuffled to get back to my horse!
Stockings answered to the spirit of the occasion. Like a deer he ran
around the rough rim, and I had to perform with the agility of a
contortionist to avoid dead snags of trees and green branches. When I
got to the point from which I had calculated George had done his
shooting I found no one. My yells brought no answers. But I heard a
horse cracking the rocks behind me. Then up from far bel