Game was abundant, and there was no lack of wood now, so that his night bivouac was not so cold or dreary as might have been expected.

Travelling, however, had become difficult, and even dangerous, owing to the rugged nature of the ground over which he proceeded.  The scenery had completely changed in its character.  Dick no longer coursed over the free, open plains, but he passed through beautiful valleys filled with luxuriant trees, and hemmed in by stupendous mountains, whose rugged sides rose upward until the snow-clad peaks pierced the clouds.

There was something awful in these dark solitudes, quite overwhelming to a youth of Dick’s temperament.  His heart began to sink lower and lower every day, and the utter impossibility of making up his mind what to do became at length agonizing.  To have turned and gone back the hundreds of miles over which he had travelled would have caused him some anxiety under any circumstances, but to do so while Joe and Henri were either wandering about there or in the power of the savages was, he felt, out of the question.  Yet in which way should he go?  Whatever course he took might lead him farther and farther away from them.

In this dilemma he came to the determination of remaining where he was, at least until the snow should leave the ground.

He felt great relief even when this hopeless course was decided upon, and set about making himself an encampment with some degree of cheerfulness.  When he had completed this task, he took his rifle, and leaving Charlie picketed in the centre of a dell, where the long, rich grass rose high above the snow, went off to hunt.

On turning a rocky point his heart suddenly bounded into his throat, for there, not thirty yards distant, stood a huge grizzly bear!

Yes, there he was at last, the monster to meet which the young hunter had so often longed—­the terrible size and fierceness of which he had heard so often spoken about by the old hunters.  There it stood at last; but little did Dick Varley think that the first time he should meet with his foe should be when alone in the dark recesses of the Rocky Mountains, and with none to succour him in the event of the battle going against him.  Yes, there was one.  The faithful Crusoe stood by his side, with his hair bristling, all his formidable teeth exposed, and his eyes glaring in their sockets.  Alas for poor Crusoe had he gone into that combat alone!  One stroke of that monster’s paw would have hurled him dead upon the ground.

CHAPTER XVII.

Dick’s first fight with a grizzly—­Adventure with a deer—­A surprise.

There is no animal in all the land so terrible and dangerous as the grizzly bear.  Not only is he the largest of the species in America, but he is the fiercest, the strongest, and the most tenacious of life—­facts which are so well understood that few of the western hunters like to meet him single-handed, unless they happen to be first-rate shots; and the Indians deem the encounter so dangerous that to wear a collar composed of the claws of a grizzly bear of his own killing is counted one of the highest honours to which a young warrior can attain.