the
creek bed and find better walking."

They turned, and in an instant more came back to their own tracks. And
suddenly Bill stopped and stared at them in dumb amazement.

He looked so astonished, so inexpressibly baffled, that for a moment his
two companions were stricken silent. Virginia's heart leaped in her
throat. Yet the tracks contained no message for her.

"What's the matter?" Harold asked. "What do you see?"

Bill caught himself and looked up. "Nothing very important--but
mighty astonishing at that. We've just walked in a two-hundred-yard
circle, up the creek to where we climbed the hill, back along the hill
in this direction, and then down. And we haven't crossed that grizzly's
tracks anywhere."

"Well, what of it?"

"Man, this snow has been here for weeks, with very little change. Do
you mean to tell me that a lively, hungry bear is going to stay that
long in one place unless he's asleep? Virginia, as sure as you live
we--or somethin'--wakened that bear out of hibernation. And his den
is somewhere in that two-hundred-yard circle."

"There's probably a cave in the rock," Harold suggested. "And I'm more
interested in the cabin and dinner than I am in it."

"Nevertheless, I've never looked into a den of hibernation, and I've
always wanted to know what they're like. It will only take a minute.
Come on--it will be worth seeing."

But Harold had very special and particular reasons why such a course
appealed to him not at all. "Yes--and maybe find a couple of other
bears in there, in the dark and no chance to fight. I'm not interested,
anyway. Go and look, if you like."

"I will, if you don't mind. Do you want to come too, Virginia? There's
no danger--really there isn't. If this had been an old she-bear we
might have found some cubs, but these old males travel around by
themselves."

"I certainly wouldn't stay away," the girl replied. And her interest
was real: the study of the forest life about her had been an ever
increasing delight. She felt that she would greatly like to peer into
one of those dark, mysterious dens where that most mysterious American
animal, the grizzly, lies in deep coma through the long, winter months.

"It will only take a minute. We haven't got to back-track him more than
a hundred yards at most. We'll be back in a minute, Harold. And if you
don't mind--I'll take my own gun."

They exchanged rifles, and Virginia and Bill started back toward the
falle