Sue was the best hound in the pack, as she still had, in spite of years of service, a good deal of speed and fight left in her.  She was a slim, dark brown hound with fine and very long ears.  Rock, one of the new hounds from Kentucky, was white and black, and had remarkably large, clear and beautiful eyes, almost human in expression.  I could not account for the fact that I suspected Rock was a deer chaser.  Buck, the other hound from Kentucky, was no longer young; he had a stump tail; his color was a little yellow with dark spots, and he had a hang-dog head and distrustful eye.  I made certain that Buck had never had any friends, for he did not understand kindness.  Nor had he ever had enough to eat.  He stayed away from the rest of the pack and growled fiercely when a pup came near him.  I tried to make friends with him, but found that I would not have an easy task.

Kaiser Bill was one of the pups, black in color, a long, lean, hungry-looking dog, and crazy.  He had not grown any in a year, either in body or intelligence.  I remembered how he would yelp just to hear himself and run any kind of a trail—­how he would be the first to quit and come back.  And if any one fired a gun near him he would run like a scared deer.

To be fair to Kaiser Bill the other pups were not much better.  Trailer and Big Foot were young still, and about all they could do was to run and howl.

If, however, they got off right on a bear trail, and no other trail crossed it they would stick, and in fact lead the pack till’ the bear got away.  Once Big Foot came whimpering into camp with porcupine quills in his nose.  Of all the whipped and funny pups!

Bobby was the dog I liked best.  He was a curly black half-shepherd, small in size; and he had a sharp, intelligent face, with the brightest hazel eyes.  His manner of wagging his tail seemed most comical yet convincing.  Bobby wagged only the nether end and that most emphatically.  He would stand up to me, holding out his forepaws, and beg.  What an appealing beggar he was!  Bobby’s value to Haught was not inconsiderable.  He was the only dog Haught ever had that would herd the pigs.  On a bear hunt Bobby lost his shepherd ways and his kindly disposition, and yelped fiercely, and hung on a trail as long as any of the pack.  He had no fear of a bear, for which reason Haught did not like to run him.

All told then we had a rather nondescript and poor pack of hounds; and the fact discouraged me.  I wanted to hunt the bad cinnamons and the grizzly sheep-killers, with which this rim-rock country was infested.  I had nothing against the acorn-eating brown or black bears.  And with this pack of hounds I doubted that we could hold one of the vicious fighting species.  But there was now nothing to do but try.  No one could tell.  We might kill a big grizzly.  And the fact that the chances were against us perhaps made for more determined effort.  I regretted, however, that I had not secured a pack of trained hounds somewhere.