to the rim and proved how he had
climbed over the most rugged break in the ridge. Indeed he was one of
the wise old scoundrels. When I reached camp I learned that Sue and
several more of the hounds had held a bear for some time in the box of
the canyon just beyond where I had to give up. Edd and Nielsen were
across this canyon, unable to go farther, and then yelled themselves
hoarse, trying to call some of us. I asked Edd if he saw the bear. "Sure
did," replied Edd. "One of them long, lean, hungry cinnamons." I had to
laugh, and told how near I had come to meeting a bear that was short,
fat, and heavy: "One of the old Jasper scoundrels!"

That night at dark the wind still blew a gale, and seemed more bitterly
cold. We hugged the camp-fire. My eyes smarted from the smoke and my
face grew black. Before I went to bed I toasted myself so thoroughly
that my clothes actually burned me as I lay down. But they heated the
blankets and that made my bed snug and soon I was in the land of dreams.
During the night I awoke. The wind had lulled. The canopy above was
clear, cold, starry, beautiful. When we rolled out the mercury showed
ten above zero. Perhaps looking at the thermometer made us feel colder,
but in any event we would have had to move about to keep warm. I built a
fire and my hands were blocks of ice when I got the blaze stirring.

That day, so keen and bright, so wonderful with its clarity of
atmosphere and the breath of winter through the pines, promised to be as
exciting as it was beautiful. Maybe this day R.C. would bag a bear!

When we reached the rim the sunrise was just flushing the purple basin,
flooding with exquisite gold and rose light the slumberous shadows. What
a glorious wilderness to greet the eye at sunrise! I suffered a pang to
realize what men missed--what I had to miss so many wonderful mornings.

We had made our plan. The hounds had left a bear in the second canyon
east of Dude. Edd started down. Copple and Takahashi followed to hug the
lower slopes. Nielsen and Haught and George held to the rim to ride east
in case the hounds chased a bear that way. And R.C. and I were to try to
climb out and down a thin rock-crested ridge which, so far as Haught
knew, no one had ever been on.

Looked at from above this ridge was indeed a beautiful and rugged
backbone of rock, sloping from the rim, extending far out and down--a
very narrow knife-edge extended promontory, green with cedar and pine,
yellow and gray