That night was moonlight, cold, starry, with a silver sheen on the spectral spruces.  During the night there came a change; it rained—­first a drizzle, then a heavy downpour, and at five-thirty a roar of hail on the tent.  This music did not last long.  At seven o’clock the thermometer registered thirty-four degrees, but there was no frost.  The morning was somewhat cloudy or foggy, with promise of clearing.

We took the hounds over to See Canyon, and while Edd and Nielsen went down with them, the rest of us waited above for developments.  Scarcely had they more than time enough to reach the gorge below when the pack burst into full chorus.  Haught led the way then around the rough rim for better vantage points.  I was mounted on one of the horses Lee had gotten for me—­a fine, spirited animal named Stockings.  Probably he had been a cavalry horse.  He was a bay with white feet, well built and powerful, though not over medium size.  One splendid feature about him was that a saddle appeared to fit him so snugly it never slipped.  And another feature, infinitely the most attractive to me, was his easy gait.  His trot and lope were so comfortable and swinging, like the motion of a rocking-chair, that I could ride him all day with pleasure.  But when it came to chasing after hounds and bears along the rim Stockings gave me trouble.  Too eager, too spirited, he would not give me time to choose the direction.  He jumped ditches and gullies, plunged into bad jumbles or rock, tried to hurdle logs too high for him, carried me under low branches and through dense thickets, and in general showed he was exceedingly willing to chase after the pack, but ignorant of rough forest travel.  Owing to this I fell behind, and got out of hearing of both hounds and men, and eventually found myself lost somewhere on the west side of See Canyon.  To get out I had to turn my back to the sun, travel west till I came to the rim above Horton Thicket, and from there return to camp, arriving rather late in the afternoon.

All the men had returned, and all the hounds except Buck.  I was rather surprised and disturbed to find the Haughts in a high state of dudgeon.  Edd looked pale and angry.  Upon questioning Nielsen I learned that the hounds had at once struck a fresh bear track in See Canyon.  Nielsen and Edd had not followed far before they heard a hound yelping in pain.  They found Buck caught in a bear trap.  The rest of the hounds came upon a little bear cub, caught in another trap, and killed it.  Nielsen said it had evidently been a prisoner for some days, being very poor and emaciated.  Fresh tracks of the mother bear were proof that she had been around trying to save it or minister to it.  There were trappers in See Canyon; and between bear hunters and trappers manifestly there was no love lost.  Edd said they had as much right to trap as we had to hunt, but that was not the question.  There had been opportunity to tell the Haughts about the big number four bear traps set in See Canyon.  But they did not tell it.  Edd had brought the dead cub back to our camp.  It was a pretty little bear cub, about six months old, with a soft silky brown coat.  No one had to look at it twice to see how it had suffered.