ng meal without salt
or pepper, and then each of us curled up like a grey wolf under the
shelter of a stone and slept as safely as if we were in our bed rolls
down in the genial atmosphere of the park in place of being in the
bitingly cold air of the bleak mountain tops.

I, at least, slept soundly, and, thanks to the clothes Pete had so
kindly made for me, I do not remember feeling cold. When I awoke again
it was daylight and I could scarcely believe that I had been asleep more
than five minutes since my friend bade me good-night. Big Pete was up
before me, of course, and when I opened my eyes I found him cooking
breakfast and making tea in a tin cup over those economical fires he so
loved to build even when we were in the park where there was fuel enough
for a roaring bonfire. It's queer how difficult it is to make water boil
on a mountain top.

"Well, now fer the witch-b'ar track agin," said Big Pete, wiping his
mouth.

"Witch-bear!" I exclaimed. "Oh--yes--you don't mean to tell me you kept
following the track of that two-legged bear this far, Pete?" I
exclaimed, suddenly recalling that we had started out following a
mysterious moccasin trail that had later turned into bear tracks.

"Sartin' sure. Didn't you figger out that that tha' b'ar war the Injun
or tha' Wild Hunter who put on moccasins made o' b'ar feet when he
thought we'd foller him?" asked Pete.

"Yes, I did, but I forgot--maybe that ram was the Wild Hunter
himself--blame it. Nothing will astonish me in this country."

"Yes, you fergot everything, even yore head when you started to foller
that tha' ram yesterday. But I didn't. I jest kept peggin' away at them
tha' rumswattel b'ar tracks and I followed 'em right up to yonder cliff.
They go on from tha', but I left 'em last night to come over by you.
Come on, we'll pick 'em up agin." And off he started.

It was soon evident that it was an exceedingly active bear which we were
following for it could climb over green glacier ice like a Swiss guide
and over rocks like a goat. It led us a wild, wild chase over crevasses,
friable and treacherous stones covered with "verglass," over dangerous
couloirs and all the other things talked of in the Alps but forgotten in
the Rockies, to high elevations, where frozen snow combed over the
beetling crags, and the avalanches roared and thundered down the rocks,
dashing the fragments of stone over the lower ice fields. We were not
roped together like mountain climbers