In half an hour I joined Copple at the point under the dome-topped end of the ridge, only to hear the hounds apparently working back up the canyon.  There was nothing for us to do but return to our stand at the saddle.  Copple hurried faster than ever.  But I had begun to tire and I could not keep up with him.  But as I had no wild cravings to meet that old grizzly face to face all by myself in a manzanita thicket I did manage by desperate efforts to keep the Indian in sight.  When I reached our stand I was wet and exhausted.  After the hot, stifling, dusty glare of the yellow slope and the burning of the manzanita brush, the cool shade was a welcome change.

Somewhere all the hounds were baying.  Not for some time could we locate the Haughts.  Finally with the aid of my glass we discovered them perched high upon the bluff above where our grizzly had gone round.  It appeared that Edd was pointing across the canyon and his father was manifesting a keen interest.  We did not need the glass then to tell that they saw a bear.  Both leveled their rifles and fired, apparently across the canyon.  Then they stood like statues.

“I’ll go down into the thicket,” said Copple.  “Maybe I can get a shot.  An’ anyway I want to see our grizzly’s tracks.”  With that he started down, and once on the steep bear trail he slid rather than walked, and soon was out of my sight.  After that I heard him crashing through thicket and brush.  Soon this sound ceased.  The hounds, too, had quit baying and the wind had lulled.  Not a rustle of a leaf!  All the hunters were likewise silent.  I enjoyed a lonely hour there watching and listening, not however without apprehensions of a bear coming along.  Certain I was that this canyon, which I christened Bear Canyon, had been full of bears.

At length I espied Copple down on the edge of the opposite slope.  The way he toiled along proved how rough was the going.  I watched him through my glasses, and was again impressed with the strange difference between the semblance of distance and the reality.  Every few steps Copple would halt to rest.  He had to hold on to the brush and in the bare places where he could not reach a bush he had to dig his heels into the earth to keep from sliding down.  In time he ascended to the place where our grizzly had rolled down, and from there he yelled up to the Haughts, high above him.  They answered, and soon disappeared on the far side of the bluff.  Copple also disappeared going round under the wall of yellow rock.  Perhaps in fifteen minutes I heard them yell, and then a wild clamor of the hounds.  Some of the pack had been put on the trail of our grizzly; but gradually the sound grew farther away.