time, over a slow fire of glowing coals, my bird would
be done to a queen's taste--a much too delicious dish to waste on any
king!

During dry, warm weather, I raked pine or spruce needles together for a
bed, but in the winter I used green pine or spruce boughs, putting
heavy, coarse ones on the bottom, planting their butt ends deeps in the
snow. Upon these I placed smaller twigs, which gave "spring" to my
couch, and finally I tufted it with the soft, tender tips of the
branches. Never have I rested better on mahogany beds than I did on
such pungent bunks! Lying there, physically weary, mentally relaxed,
drowsily gazing into my campfire, I lived over the day's adventures,
and would not have changed places with any man alive!

I found making camp in temperate weather was no task at all. It was
when it was cold or wet that the real test of my woodcraft came. I
learned that the first requisite in camp-making was the selection of a
suitable camp site. It had to be chosen with thought of the
accessibility to fuel and water. It had to be sheltered from the wind,
which was not always easy to manage in high altitudes, for though the
prevailing winter wind in the Rockies blows from the west, it swirls
and eddies in the canyons, coming from most unexpected and unwelcome
directions and often from all points of the compass in turn. Usually
ready-made camps, overhanging cliffs, were available. When they were
not, my ingenuity rose to the occasion and I thatched together twigs of
willow or birch, or even spruce or pine, though the latter were stiffer
and more difficult to fit tightly together. Beginning at the bottom, I
worked upward, lapping each successive layer over the one beneath, as
in laying shingles, and pointing the tips of the leaves or needles
downward, so they would shed water.

Sometimes I had difficulty in starting my fire. If there had been
daily showers for weeks, and the needles and the deadwood, as well as
the ground itself, were soaked, or if in winter the deadwood were
buried beneath snow and the dead limbs of standing trees difficult to
break off, it was a discouraging task. Sometimes after what seemed
like eons of struggling, I would get a sickly little flame flickering,
when, puff! along would come a blast of wind and smother it out with
snow. I did learn eventually that pitch knots were so rich in gum or
resin that they would always catch fire, and so I shaved off splinters
with my trusty hunt