hot."

We sat there a while longer, slowly calming down. Wonderful indeed had
been some of the moments of thrill, but there had been others not
conducive to happiness. Why do men yearn for adventure in wild moments
and regret the risks and spilled blood afterward?

IX

The hounds enjoyed a well-earned rest the next day. R.C. and I, behind
Haught's back, fed them all they could eat. The old hunter had a fixed
idea that dogs should be kept lean and hungry so they would run bears
the better. Perhaps he was right. Only I could not withstand Old Dan and
Old Tom as they limped to me, begging and whining. Yet not even sore
feet and hunger could rob these grand old hounds of their dignity. For
an hour that morning I sat beside them in a sunny spot.

In the afternoon Copple took me on a last deer hunt for that trip. We
rode down the canyon a mile, and climbed out on the west slope. Haught
had described this country as a "wolf" to travel. He used that word to
designate anything particularly tough. We found the ridge covered with a
dense forest, in places a matted jungle of pine saplings. These thickets
were impenetrable. Heavy snows had bent the pines so that they grew at
an angle. We found it necessary to skirt these thickets, and at that,
sometimes had to cut our way through with our little axes. Hunting was
scarcely possible under such conditions. Still we did not see any deer
tracks.

Eventually we crossed this ridge, or at least the jungle part of it, and
got lower down into hollows and swales full of aspens. Copple recognized
country he had hunted before. We made our way up a long shallow hollow
that ended in an open where lay the remains of an old log cabin, and
corrals. From under a bluff bubbled a clear beautiful spring. Copple
looked all around slowly, with strange expression, and at last,
dismounting he knelt to drink of the spring.

"Ah-h-good!" he exclaimed, after a deep draught. "Get down an' drink.
Snow water an' it never goes dry."

Indeed it was so cold it made my teeth ache, and so pure and sweet that
I drank until I could hold no more. Deer and cat and bear tracks showed
along the margin of clean sand. Lower down were fresh turkey tracks. A
lonely spring in the woods visited by wild game! This place was
singularly picturesque and beautiful. The purest drinking water is found
in wild forest or on mountains. Men, cities, civilization contaminate
waters that are not isolated.

Copple told me a man name