on 



nificence, with a comet-like tail of snow-dust 

 Just at timber-line it struck a ledge and glanced 

 to one side, and at the same time shot up into 

 the air so high that for an instant I saw the 

 treetops beneath it. But it came back to earth 

 with awful force, and I felt the ground trem- 

 ble as it crushed a wide way through the woods. 

 It finally brought up at the bottom of a gulch 

 with a wreckage of hundreds of noble spruce 

 trees that it had crushed down and swept be- 

 fore it. 



As I had left the trail on the heights, I was 

 now far from it and in a rugged and wholly un- 

 frequented section, so that coming upon the fresh 

 tracks of a mountain lion did not surprise me. 

 But I was not prepared for what occurred soon 

 afterward. Noticing a steamy vapor rising from 

 a hole in the snow by the protruding roots of an 

 overturned tree, I walked to the hole to learn the 

 cause of it. One whiff of the vapor stiffened my 

 hair and limbered my legs. I shot down a steep 

 slope, dodging trees and rocks. The vapor was 

 rank with the odor from a bear. 



At the bottom of the slope I found the frozen 



20 



