black bear, which encouraged the hunt- 

 ers to think that they might find a 

 grizzly (which, by the way, they did 

 not). 



The dust was thick and red, envelop- 

 ing us all day long like some horrible 

 insistent monster that had resolved it- 

 self into atoms to choke, blind and 

 strangle us. Nimrod looked like a clay 

 man — hair, eyebrows, mustache, skin, 

 and clothes were all one solid coating 

 of red dust. We were all alike. Even 

 the sugar, paper-wrapped in the bot- 

 tom of a box, covered by other boxes, 

 bags and a canvas, became adulterated 

 almost past use. 



On the fourth day this changed, and 

 we camped at the foot of a granite 

 mountain. It made one think of the 

 Glass Mountain of fable, with its 

 smooth stretches of polished rock shin- 



