horse!  Stockings answered to the spirit of the occasion.  Like a deer he ran around the rough rim, and I had to perform with the agility of a contortionist to avoid dead snags of trees and green branches.  When I got to the point from which I had calculated George had done his shooting I found no one.  My yells brought no answers.  But I heard a horse cracking the rocks behind me.  Then up from far below rang the sharp spangs of rifles in quick action.  Nielsen and Edd were shooting.  I counted seven shots.  How the echoes rang from wall to wall, to die hollow and faint in the deep canyons!

I galloped ahead to the next point, finding only the tracks of R.C.’s boots.  Everywhere I peered for the bear I had sighted, and at intervals I yelled.  For all the answer I got I might as well have been alone on the windy rim of the world.  My voice seemed lost in immensity.  Then I rode westward, then back eastward, and to and fro until both Stockings and I were weary.  At last I gave up, and took a good, long rest under a pine on the rim.  Not a shot, not a yell, not a sound but wind and the squall of a jay disrupted the peace of that hour.  I profited by this lull in the excitement by more means than one, particularly in sight of a flock of wild pigeons.  They alighted in the tops of pines below me, so that I could study them through my field glass.  They were considerably larger than doves, dull purple color on the back, light on the breast, with ringed or barred neck.  Haught had assured me that birds of this description were indeed the famous wild pigeons, now almost extinct in the United States.  I remembered my father telling me he had seen flocks that darkened the skies.  These pigeons appeared to have swift flight.

Another feature of this rest along the rim was a sight just as beautiful as that of the pigeons, though not so rare; and it was the flying of clouds of colored autumn leaves on the wind.

The westering of the sun advised me that the hours had fled, and it was high time for me to bestir myself toward camp.  On my way back I found Haught, his son George, Copple and R.C. waiting for Edd and Nielsen to come up over the rim, and for me to return.  They asked for my story.  Then I learned theirs.  Haught had kept even with the hounds, but had seen only the brown bear that had crossed the ridge early in the day.  Copple had worked far westward, to no avail.  R.C. had been close to George and me, had heard our bullets pat, yet had been unable to locate any bear.  To my surprise it turned out that George had shot at a brown bear when I had supposed it was my black one.  Whereupon Haught said:  “Reckon Edd an’ Nielsen smoked up some other bear.”