Then it was in short order that I found myself alone, Copple, R.C. and George Haught having got ahead of me.  I kept to the rim.  The hounds could be heard plainly and also the encouraging yells of Nielsen and Edd.  Apparently the chase was working along under me, in the direction I was going.  The baying of the pack, the scent of pine, the ring of iron-shod hoofs on stone, the sense of wild, broken, vast country, the golden void beneath and the purple-ranged horizon—­all these brought vividly and thrillingly to mind my hunting days with Buffalo Jones along the north rim of the Grand Canyon.  I felt a pang, both for the past, and for my friend and teacher, this last of the old plainsmen who had died recently.  In his last letter to me, written with a death-stricken hand, he had talked of another hunt, of more adventure, of his cherished hope to possess an island in the north Pacific, there to propagate wild animals—­he had dreamed again the dream that could never come true.  I was riding with my face to the keen, sweet winds of the wild, and he was gone.  No joy in life is ever perfect.  I wondered if any grief was ever wholly hopeless.

I came at length to a section of rim where huge timbered steps reached out and down.  Dismounting I tied Stockings, and descended to the craggy points below, where I clambered here and there, looking, listening.  No longer could I locate the hounds; now the baying sounded clear and sharp, close at hand, and then hollow and faint, and far away.  I crawled under gnarled cedars, over jumbles of rock, around leaning crags, until I got out to a point where I had such command of slopes and capes, where the scene was so grand that I was both thrilled and awed.  Somewhere below me to my left were the hounds still baying.  The lower reaches of the rim consisted of ridges and gorges, benches and ravines, canyons and promontories—­a country so wild and broken that it seemed impossible for hounds to travel it, let alone men.  Above me, to my right, stuck out a yellow point of rim, and beyond that I knew there jutted out another point, and more and more points on toward the west.  George was yelling from one of them, and I thought I heard a faint reply from R.C. or Copple.  I believed for the present they were too far westward along the rim, and so I devoted my attention to the slopes under me toward my left.  But once my gaze wandered around, and suddenly I espied a shiny black object moving along a bare slope, far below.  A bear!  So thrilled and excited was I that I did not wonder why this bear walked along so leisurely and calmly.  Assuredly he had not even heard the hounds.  I began to shoot, and in five rapid shots I spattered dust all over him.  Not until I had two more shots, one of which struck close, did he begin to run.  Then he got out of my sight.  I yelled and yelled to those ahead of me along the rim.  Somebody answered, and next somebody began to shoot.  How I climbed and crawled and scuffled to get back to my