We were mired at times, and again
there were long stretches over rock-slides, where the horses scrambled
like cats.
But with every mile there came a sense of exhilaration. We were making
progress.
There was little or no life to be seen. The Woodsman, going ahead of us,
encountered a brown bear reaching up for a cluster of salmon-berries. He
ambled away, quite unconcerned, and happily ignorant of that desperate
trio of junior Rineharts, bearing down on him with almost the entire
contents of the best gun shop in Spokane.
It should have been a great place for bears, that Agnes Creek Valley.
There were ripe huckleberries, service-berries, salmon-and
manzanita-berries. There were plenty of places where, if I had been a
bear, I should have been entirely happy--caves and great rocks, and
good, cold water. And I believe they were there. But thirty-one horses
and a sort of family tendency to see if there is an echo anywhere about,
and such loud inquiries as, "Are you all right, mother?" and "Who the
dickens has any matches?"--these things are fatal to seeing wild life.
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