h. I had to step
up, climb up, pull myself up, by hand and knee and body. My rifle grew
to weigh a ton. My cartridge belt was a burden of lead around my waist.
If I had been hot and wet below in the thicket I wondered what I grew on
the last steps of this ridge. Yet even the toil and the pain held a keen
pleasure. I did not analyze my feelings then, but it was good to be
there.

The rim-rock came out to a point above me, seeming unscalable, all grown
over with brush and lichen, and stunted spruce. But by hauling myself
up, and crawling here, and winding under bridges of rock there, and
holding to the brush, at last, panting and spent, I reached the top.

I was ready to drop on the mats of pine needles and lie there,
unutterably grateful for rest, when I heard Old Tom baying, deep and
ringing and close. He seemed right under the rim on the side of the
ridge opposite to where I had climbed. I looked around. There was
George's horse tied to a pine, and farther on my own horse Stockings.

Then I walked to the rim and looked down into the gold and scarlet
thicket. Actually it seemed to me then, and always will seem, that the
first object I clearly distinguished was a big black bear standing in
an open aisle at the upper reach of the thicket close to the cliff. He
shone black as shiny coal. He was looking down into the thicket, as if
listening to the baying hound.

I could not repress an exclamation of surprise and thrilling excitement,
and I uttered it as I raised my rifle. Just the instant I saw his
shining fur through the circle of my rear sight he heard me and jumped,
and my bullet missed him. Like a black flash he was gone around a corner
of gray ledge.

"Well!" I ejaculated, suddenly weak. "After all this long day--to get a
chance like that--and miss!"

All that seemed left of that long day was the sunset, out of which I
could not be cheated by blunders or bad luck. Westward a glorious golden
ball blazed over the rim. Above that shone an intense belt of
color--Coleridge's yellow lightning--and it extended to a bank of cloud
that seemed transparent purple, and above all this flowed a sea of
purest blue sky with fleecy sails of pink and white and rose,
exquisitely flecked with gold.

Lost indeed was I to weariness and time until the gorgeous
transformation at last ended in dull gray. I walked along the rim, back
to where I had tied my horse. He saw me and whinnied before I located
the spot. I just about had stren