ny
signs of bear, mule deer, panther or mountain lion, and other
game.

They camped one night in a pine grove by the side of a brook that
came rushing and foaming down from the mountains, and the next
morning Albert, who walked some distance from the water, saw a
silver-tip bear lapping the water of the stream. The bear raised
his head and looked at Albert, and Albert stopped and looked at
the bear. The boy was unarmed, but he was not afraid. The bear
showed no hostility, only curiosity. He gazed a few moments,
stretched his nose as if he would sniff the air, then turned and
lumbered away among the pines. Albert returned to camp, but he
said nothing of the bear to anybody except Dick.

"He was such a jolly, friendly looking fellow, Dick," he said,
"that I didn't want any of these men to go hunting him."

Dick laughed.

"Don't you worry about that, Al," he said. "They are hunting gold,
not bears."

On the twelfth day they came out on a comparatively level
plateau, where antelope were grazing and prairie chickens
whirring. It looked like a fertile country, and they were glad
of easy traveling for the wagons. Just at the edge of the pine
woods that they were leaving was a beautiful little lake of
clear, blue water, by which they stayed half a day, refreshing
themselves, and catching some excellent fish, the names of
which they did not know.

"How much long, Bright Sun, will it take us to reach the gold
country?" asked Conway of the Indian, in Dick's hearing.

"About a week," replied Bright Sun. "The way presently will be
very rough and steep, up! up! up! and we can go only a few miles
a day, but the mountains are already before us. See!"

He pointed northward and upward, and there before them was the
misty blue loom that Dick knew was the high mountains. In those
dark ridges lay the gold that they were going to seek, and his
heart throbbed. Albert and he could do such wonderful things
with it.

They were so high already that the nights were crisp with cold;
but at the edge of the forest, running down to the little lake,
fallen wood was abundant, and they built that night a great fire
of fallen boughs that crackled and roared merrily. Yet they
hovered closely, because the wind, sharp with ice, was whistling
down from the mountains, and the night air, even in the little
valley, was heavy with frost. Dick's buffalo robe was dry now,
and he threw it around Albert, as he sat before the fire. It
en