danged mad, what of the gun and Klooch. Think of it, O man! A
brand-new, unclassified, uncopyrighted breed, and wiped out before ever
it opened its eyes or took out its intention papers! Well, so be it.
Life's full of disappointments, and rightly so. Meat is best after a
famine, and a bed soft after a hard trail.

"As I was saying, I took out after the beast with the hand-axe, and hung
to its heels down the valley; but when he circled back toward the head, I
was left winded at the lower end. Speaking of grub, I might as well stop
long enough to explain a couple of points. Up thereabouts, in the midst
of the mountains, is an almighty curious formation. There is no end of
little valleys, each like the other much as peas in a pod, and all neatly
tucked away with straight, rocky walls rising on all sides. And at the
lower ends are always small openings where the drainage or glaciers must
have broken out. The only way in is through these mouths, and they are
all small, and some smaller than others. As to grub--you've slushed
around on the rain-soaked islands of the Alaskan coast down Sitka way,
most likely, seeing as you're a traveller. And you know how stuff grows
there--big, and juicy, and jungly. Well, that's the way it was with
those valleys. Thick, rich soil, with ferns and grasses and such things
in patches higher than your head. Rain three days out of four during the
summer months; and food in them for a thousand mammoths, to say nothing
of small game for man.

"But to get back. Down at the lower end of the valley I got winded and
gave over. I began to speculate, for when my wind left me my dander got
hotter and hotter, and I knew I'd never know peace of mind till I dined
on roasted mammoth-foot. And I knew, also, that that stood for _skookum_
_mamook pukapuk_--excuse Chinook, I mean there was a big fight coming.
Now the mouth of my valley was very narrow, and the walls steep. High up
on one side was one of those big pivot rocks, or balancing rocks, as some
call them, weighing all of a couple of hundred tons. Just the thing. I
hit back for camp, keeping an eye open so the bull couldn't slip past,
and got my ammunition. It wasn't worth anything with the rifle smashed;
so I opened the shells, planted the powder under the rock, and touched it
off with slow fuse. Wasn't much of a charge, but the old boulder tilted
up lazily and dropped down into place, with just space enough to let the
creek drain ni