me I can remember doing
the same, after you told me it was best?"

"You certainly did pull it shut after you," Hugh quickly replied.

"Well, it's part way open right now, you can see for yourself if it
isn't," Bud asserted strenuously.

"That's right, it is, Bud."

"I wonder if the wind could have done it," the other mused. "It
does play some queer pranks, I happen to know from past experiences.
Guess that fastening is a bad one, and don't hold worth a cent."

"It's too late for us to bother fixing anything now, Bud," said
Ralph; "though to tell you the truth I always thought the door held
as tight as anything."

"Then what opened it, do you think?" demanded Bud, as they continued
to approach the shack, the soldier who was accompanying them to take
back the horse interested in what they were saying.

"I don't know, if you ask me point blank," Ralph admitted, frankly.
"It might have been that you didn't fasten it the right way. Then
again p'raps some one has passed along here, and stepped in to see
if there was anything worth taking."

"Whee! I hope that last isn't the right answer," was what Bud
hastened to observe; "I've got a few little things there I'd hate
to lose, let me tell you. Now, if you come right down to---oh! Hugh!"

"What's the matter with you?" demanded the one whose name had been
uttered so wildly.

"Didn't you see that---where were your eyes that you didn't see what
poked out of the open door just then?" cried Bud, coming to a complete
standstill in his astonishment and perplexity.

"I'm sorry to say that I didn't happen to be looking that way just
when you spoke," Hugh admitted. "But tell us what it was you saw,
Bud!"

"A head! A bear's head!" exclaimed Bud.

"That begins to sound interesting," said Ralph, as his face lighted up.

"But Ralph, you said there were no bears around here any more, so how
could that be?" Hugh asked, as he turned on the other.

"Hardly that, Hugh; I told you I had never happened to run across
one while trapping up here; but there was a time when they were said
to be thick around this section; and who knows but what one may have
wandered back, to see what the country promised him in the way of food."

Bud began dancing up and down in new excitement.

"We did leave a lot of grub in there, fellows," he told them; "and
chances are that the old black sinner has gone and spoiled what he
couldn't eat. That's a habit with bears, I'm told; they're about as