OH, SHOOT! 



good to us, so we agreed to do the guiding if 

 he would do the rest of the things he had men- 

 tioned and see that we did not get lost. As 

 to those mysterious glaciers towards which I 

 had been working these two years, Mr. Heney 

 said we could not reach them yet. The Copper 

 River delta was full of rotten ice, and the 

 banks were so choked with snow that it was 

 impossible to take an outfit up before the 

 slews cleared. Out at Camp Six, however, a 

 number of bears had been seen, one in particu- 

 lar so large that no day laborer could look 

 upon his tracks and retain a sense of direction. 

 Only the section bosses could stand their 

 ground after one glance at his spoor. 



We were installed at Camp Six by 5.30 on 

 the following afternoon and had unchained 

 our dogs. At 5.49 Jack had found a porcu- 

 pine. A man came running to inform us 

 that he was "all quilled up," and so he was; 

 his nose, lips, tongue, and throat were white 

 with the cruel spines. 



"Get them out quick, or they'll work in," 

 we were advised, and somebody produced a 

 pair of tweezers, with which we fell to. But 

 Jack suddenly developed the disposition of a 

 wolf and the strength of a hippopotamus. 



46 



