90 AN AMERICAN HUNTER 



on foot. Most of the time we were in snow, and it was 

 extraordinary that the horses could get through it at all, 

 especially in working up the steep mountain-sides. But 

 until it got so deep that they actually floundered that is, 

 so long as they could get their legs down to the bottom 

 I found that they could travel much faster than I could. 

 On this day some twenty good-natured, hard-riding 

 young fellows from the ranches within a radius of a 

 dozen miles had joined our party to " see the President 

 kill a bear." They were a cheerful and eagerly friendly 

 crowd, as hardy as so many young moose, and utterly fear- 

 less horsemen; one of them rode his wild, nervous horse 

 bareback, because it had bucked so when he tried to put 

 the saddle on it that morning that he feared he would 

 get left behind, and so abandoned the saddle outright. 

 Whenever they had a chance they all rode at headlong 

 speed, paying no heed to the slope of the mountain-side 

 or the character of the ground. In the deep snow they 

 did me a real service, for of course they had to ride 

 their horses single file through the drifts, and by the time 

 my turn came we had a good trail. 



After a good deal of beating to and fro, we found 

 where an old she-bear with two yearlings had crossed a 

 hill during the night and put the hounds on their tracks. 

 Johnny and Jake, with one or two of the cowboys, fol- 

 lowed the hounds over the exceedingly difficult hillside 

 where the trail led; or rather, they tried to follow them, 

 for the hounds speedily got clear away, as there were 

 many places where they could run on the crust of the 

 snow, in which the horses wallowed almost helpless. The 



