Night fell quickly down in that sequestered pit, and indeed it was black night.  A blazing camp-fire enhanced the circling gloom, and invested the great brown pines with some weird aspect.  The boys put up an old tent for the hounds.  Poor Buck was driven out of this shelter by his canine rivals.  I took pity upon him, and tied him at the foot of my bed.  When R.C. and I crawled into our blankets we discovered Buck snugly settled between our beds, and wonderful to hear, he whined.  “Well, Buck, old dog, you keep the skunks away,” said R.C.  And Buck emitted some kind of a queer sound, apparently meant to assure us that he would keep even a lion away.  From my bed I could see the tips of the black pines close to the white stars.  Before I dropped to sleep the night grew silent, except for the faint moan of wind and low murmur of brook.

We crawled out early, keen to run from the cold wash in the brook to the hot camp-fire.  George and Edd had gone down the canyon after the horses, which had been hobbled and turned loose.  Lee had remained with his father at Beaver Dam camp.  For breakfast Takahashi had venison, biscuits, griddle cakes with maple syrup, and hot cocoa.  I certainly did not begin on an empty stomach what augured to be a hard day.  Buck hung around me this morning, and I subdued my generous impulses long enough to be convinced that he had undergone a subtle change.  Then I fed him.  Old Dan and Old Tom were witnesses of this procedure, which they regarded with extreme disfavor.  And the pups tried to pick a fight with Buck.

By eight o’clock we were riding up the colored slopes, through the still forest, with the sweet, fragrant, frosty air nipping at our noses.  A mile from camp we reached a notch in the rim that led down to Dude Creek, and here Edd and Nielsen descended with the hounds.  The rest of us rode out to a point there to await developments.  The sun had already flooded the basin with golden light; the east slopes of canyon and rim were dark in shade.  I sat on a mat of pine needles near the rim, and looked, and cared not for passage of time.

But I was not permitted to be left to sensorial dreams.  Right under us the hounds opened up, filling the canyon full of bellowing echoes.  They worked down.  Slopes below us narrowed to promontories and along these we kept our gaze.  Suddenly Haught gave a jump, and rose, thumping to his horse.  “Saw a bar,” he yelled.  “Just got a glimpse of him crossin’ an open ridge.  Come on.”  We mounted and chased Haught over the roughest kind of rocky ground, to overtake him at the next point on the rim.  “Ride along, you fellars,” he said, “an’ each pick out a stand.  Keep ahead of the dogs an’ look sharp.”