us up if he wanted
to."

"We'll eat _him_, that's what we'll do," said John, decisively. "I only
wish we had a kettle or a frying-pan or something."

"Seems to me you'd better get the bear first," said Jesse. "But we might
look in among the traps in the back of the hut and see what we can find.
These hunters nearly always leave some kind of cooking things at their
camps."

Sure enough, when the boys entered the barabbara to look after their
rifles, and began to rummage among the piles of _klipsies_ which they
found thrown back under the eaves, they unearthed a broken cast-iron
frying-pan and, what caused them even greater delight, a little, dirty
sack, which contained perhaps three or four pounds of salt. They sat on
the grass of the floor and looked at one another with broad smiles. "If
everything keeps up as lucky as this," said Jesse, "we'll be ready to
keep house all right pretty soon. But ought we to use these things that
don't belong to us?"

"Surely we may," answered Rob. "It is always the custom in a wild
country for any one who is lost and in need to take food when he finds
it, and to use a camp as though it were his own. Of course we mustn't
waste anything or carry anything off, but while we're here we'll act as
though this place were ours, and if any one finds us here we'll pay for
what we use. That's the Alaska way, as you know."

"You're not going out after that big bear, are you?" asked Jesse,
anxiously, of Rob.

"Of course; we're all going! What are these new rifles for--just look,
brand-new high-power Winchesters, every one--and any one of these guns
will shoot as hard for us as for a grown man."

They sat for some time in the hut discussing various matters. At last
John crawled to the door and looked out. He was rather a matter-of-fact
boy in his way, and there seemed no special excitement in his voice as
he remarked: "Well, Rob, there comes your bear."

The others hurried to the door. Sure enough, upon the bare mountain
slope beyond the lagoon, nearly half a mile away, there showed plainly
enough the body of an enormous bear, large as a horse. It was one of the
great Kadiak bears, which are the biggest of all the world.

"Cracky!" said Jesse; "he looks pretty big to me. Do you suppose he'll
find us here in the house?"

Rob, the oldest of the three, who had been on one or two hunts with his
father, looked serious as he watched this giant animal advancing down
the hill-side with its long, r