as beautiful as
that golden forest we rode through."

"It wouldn't be so beautiful if you had to wallow through ten miles of
it," she sagely responded. "Daddy will be wet to the skin, for I found he
didn't take his slicker. However, the sun may be out before night. That's
the way the thing goes in the hills."

To the youth, though the peaks were storm-hid, the afternoon was joyous.
Berrie was a sweet companion. Under her supervision he practised at
chopping wood and took a hand at cooking. At her suggestion he stripped
the tarpaulin from her father's bed and stretched it over a rope before
the tent, thus providing a commodious kitchen and dining-room. Under this
roof they sat and talked of everything except what they should do if the
father did not return, and as they talked they grew to even closer
understanding.

Though quite unlearned of books, she had something which was much more
piquant than anything which theaters and novels could give--she possessed
a marvelous understanding of the natural world in which she lived. As the
companion of her father on many of his trips, she had absorbed from him,
as well as from the forest, a thousand observations of plant and animal
life. Seemingly she had nothing of the woman's fear of the wilderness,
she scarcely acknowledged any awe of it. Of the bears, and other
predatory beasts, she spoke carelessly.

"Bears are harmless if you let 'em alone," she said, "and the
mountain-lion is a great big bluff. He won't fight, you can't make him
fight; but the mother lion will. She's dangerous when she has cubs--most
animals are. I was out hunting grouse one day with a little twenty-two
rifle, when all at once, as I looked up along a rocky point I was
crossing, I saw a mountain-lion looking at me. First I thought I'd let
drive at him; but the chances were against my getting him from there, so
I climbed up above him--or where I thought he was--and while I was
looking for him I happened to glance to my right, and there he was about
fifty feet away looking at me pleasant as you please. Didn't seem to be
mad at all--'peared like he was just wondering what I'd do next. I jerked
my gun into place, but he faded away. I crawled around to get behind him,
and just when I reached the ledge on which he had been standing a few
minutes before, I saw him just where I'd been. He had traded places with
me. I began to have that creepy feeling. He was so silent and so kind of
pleasant-looking I got leer