by the weight of snow in winter.  It would have been more interesting if I had not been so anxious to get up.  I grew hotter and wetter than I had been in the manzanitas.  Moreover, what with the labor and worry and exhaustion, my apprehensions had increased.  They increased until I had to confess that I was scared.  Once I heard a rustle and pad on the leaves somewhere below.  That made matters worse.  Surely I would meet a bear.  I would meet him coming down-hill!  And I must never shoot a bear coming down-hill!  Buffalo Jones had cautioned me on that score, so had Scott Teague, the bear hunter of Colorado, and so had Haught.  “Don’t never shoot no ole bar comin’ down hill, ’cause if you do he’ll just roll up an’ pile down on you!”

I climbed until my tongue hung out and my heart was likely to burst.  Then when I had to straddle a tree to keep from sliding down I got desperate and mad and hoped an old grizzly would happen along to make an end to my misery.

It took me an hour to climb up that part of the slope which constituted the thicket of oak, maple and aspen.  It was half-past three when finally I reached the saddle where we had shot at the grizzly.  I rested as long as I dared.  I had still a long way to go up that ridge to the rim, and how did I know whether or not I could surmount it.

However, a good rest helped to revive strength and spirit.  Then I started.  Once above the saddle I was out clear in the open, high above the canyons, and the vast basin still farther below, yet far indeed under the pine-fringed rim above.  This climb was all over stone.  The ridge was narrow-crested, yellow, splintered rock, with a few dwarf pines and spruces and an occasional bunch of manzanita.  I did not hear a sound that I did not make myself.  Whatever had become of the hounds, and the other hunters?  The higher I climbed the more I liked it.  After an hour I was sure that I could reach the rim by this route, and of course that stimulated me.  To make sure, and allay doubt, I sat down on a high backbone of bare rock and studied the heave and bulge of ridge above me.  Using my glasses I made sure that I could climb out.  It would be a task equal to those of lion-hunting days with Jones, and it made me happy to realize that despite the intervening ten years I was still equal to the task.

Once assured of this I grew acute to the sensations of the hour.  This was one of my especial joys of the open—­to be alone high on some promontory, above wild and beautiful scenery.  The sun was still an hour from setting, and it had begun to soften, to grow intense, and more golden.  There were clouds and lights that promised a magnificent sunset.

So I climbed on.  When I stopped to rest I would shove a stone loose and watch it heave and slide, and leap out and hurtle down, to make the dust fly, and crash into the thickets, and eventually start an avalanche that would roar down into the canyon.

The Tonto Basin seemed a vast bowl of rolling, rough, black ridges and canyons, green and dark and yellow, with the great mountain ranges enclosing it to south and west.  The black-fringed promontories of the rim, bold and rugged, leagues apart, stood out over the void.  The colors of autumn gleamed under the cliffs, everywhere patches of gold and long slants of green and spots of scarlet and clefts of purple.