that
Bill would do his best to care for him till the sprained foot was well
again. At first he rebelled. He must get home, he said; Andrew Malden
was expecting him. But the Indian only grunted and sat in silence, as
Job tried to walk and fell back upon the blankets with the realization
that Bill was right.

All day the Indian pottered about in silence, fixing his traps and
guns, and weaving a pair of moccasins for winter's use, while Job lay
half asleep, half awake, living over again the glories of the week
just closing. Toward evening the old Indian came in and sat by his
guest and began to talk. Far into the night hours, while the camp-fire
flashed and crackled without, he kept up his stories, till Job,
intensely interested, forgot his pains and his dreams. In quaint
English, shorn of all unnecessary words, Bill talked on.

First he told bear stories, finishing each thrilling passage with a
significant "Ugh!" The one that roused Job most and held him
transfixed was of once when he suddenly met, coming out of the forest,
a giant grizzly, which rose on his monster hind feet and advanced for
the death embrace. "Me fire gun heap quick, kill him all dead, he
fall, hit Bill, arm all torn, blood come, me sick. Ugh!" And turning
back his blanket, he showed Job the scars from the grizzly's dying
blow.

Then he told tales of adventure. Of scaling the Half Dome by means of
the iron pegs some daring climber had left there, and how finally,
reaching the summit and lying flat, he peered over and saw himself
mirrored in the lake below. He told of a wild ride down the icy slope
of the Lyell Glacier; of a night, storm-bound, in the Hetchy-Hetchy,
where he slept under the shelter of a limb drooping beneath the snow,
with a group of frightened mountain birds for bedfellows. He told of
beautiful parks far amid the solitude of the high Sierras, great
mountain meadows where shy deer grazed, of crystal lakes that lay
embowered in many a hidden mountain spot, of Mount Ritter's grandeur
and the dizzy heights of Mount Whitney, till Job's head reeled, and he
fell asleep that night dreaming of standing on the jagged, topmost
summit of a lofty peak, with all the mountains going round and round
below him, till he grew dizzy and fell and fell--and found himself
wide awake, listening to the hoot of a distant owl and the breathing
of his tawny host stretched out under the sky by the dying embers of
the camp-fire.

During the next two days Job w