h tiny torrent, now stood
out in resplendent hues and shone afar off like gay ribbons running
through the dark-green pines. Gorgeously, too, with scarlet, crimson
and gold, gleamed the lower spurs, where the oak-brush grew in dense
masses and bore beneath a blaze of color, a goodly harvest of acorns,
now ripe and loosened in their cups.

It was where one of these spurs joined the parent mountain, where the
oak-brush grew thickest, and, as a consequence, the acorns were most
abundant, that the captain, well versed in wood-craft mysteries,
had built his bear trap. For two days he had been engaged upon
it, and now, as the evening drew on, he sat contemplating it with
satisfaction, as a work finished and perfected.

From his station there, on the breast of the lofty mountain, the
captain could scan many an acre of sombre pine forest with pleasant
little parks interspersed, and here and there long slopes brown with
bunch grass. He was the lord of this wild domain. And yet his sway
there was not undisputed. Behind an intervening spur to the westward
ran an old Indian trail long traveled by the Southern Utes in their
migrations north for trading and hunting purposes. And even now, a
light smoke wafted upward on the evening air, told of a band encamped
on the trail on their homeward journey to the Southwest.

The captain needed not this visual token of their proximity. He
had been aware of it for several days. Their calls at his cabin in
the lonely little park below had been frequent, and they had been
specially solicitous of his coffee, his sugar, his biscuit and other
delicacies, insomuch that once or twice during his absence these
ingenuous children of Nature had with primitive simplicity, entered
his cabin and helped themselves without leave or stint.

However, as he knew their stay would be short, the captain bore
these neighborly attentions with mild forbearance. It was guests more
graceless than these who had roused his wrath.

From their secret haunts far back towards the Snowy Range the bears
had come down to feast upon the ripened acorns, and so doing, had
scented the captain's bacon and sugar afar off and had prowled by
night about the cabin. Nay, more, three days before, the captain,
having gone hurriedly away and left the door loosely fastened, upon
his return had found all in confusion. Many of his eatables had
vanished, his flour sack was ripped open, and, unkindest cut of all,
his beloved books lay scatter