The Selkirks Revisited 127 



turned and struck at the dogs, and where they had jumped 

 aside, but only to come back when he moved on. But 

 why we had not heard them bark was a mystery to us, and 

 this only deepened as we followed the trail for about three 

 miles and found that during this entire distance the bear 

 had not gone out of a walk. Of course we felt that we 

 had lost a fine bear. 



We decided, therefore, to try the dogs again. 

 There was a slide across the creek from us that we had 

 named the Gateway. It ran through a deep gulch in the 

 face of the mountain, and opened out suddenly into a fan- 

 shaped declivity that sloped to the creek nearly half a mile 

 below, and was covered clear to the bottom with fifty feet 

 of snow. Above this opening, the mountain on one side 

 showed steep, high cliffs, broken into terraces. On the 

 other grew an open forest with little underbrush, but much 

 down timber, and just beyond, round a point of the hills, 

 was a mountain stream that fairly hurled itself down to the 

 creek. The whole mountain was so steep that we could 

 only climb it by grasping at bushes and fallen trees. 



Just as we came opposite to this slide on our next ex- 

 cursion, we missed the dogs and, turning to look for them, 

 heard a chorus of barks receding up-stream on the other 

 side of the creek. We followed, but after going half a mile, 

 the dogs turned and made straight for the Gateway, and 

 when they suddenly stopped barking, determined to dis- 

 cover the meaning of such conduct, we crossed the stream 

 and found them sniffing about the edge of the mountain 

 torrent, the bear evidently having taken to the water and 

 put them off the scent. We waited some time, but the dogs 

 seemed unable to pick up the trail, and as my broken ribs 



