"I'm not worryin' about them," Pinkey replied, confidently, "if we can jest hold that cook. We've got to humour him till we git through this trip, then after he's paid off I aim to work him over and leave him for somebody to drag out."
But as if to make amends for the loss he had caused his employers, Hicks' manner grew increasingly saccharine and he redoubled his efforts to provide entertainment for the guests. By the time they arrived at the Cañon Hotel Wallie was questioning his suspicions of Hicks and felt inclined to believe that he had been hasty in his judgment.
He was undoubtedly an asset, for the entire party hung on his words and relied upon him to see that they missed nothing of interest. Mr. Stott was indebted to him for an experience which relegated the Florida hoot-owl to the background, though the thrill of the adventure was so intermingled with anguish that it was impossible to tell where one left off and the other began.
Sliding down the snow-covered side of a mountain in a frying-pan was fraught with all the sensations Hicks had described and some he had omitted.
When they had reached the particular spot which he had recommended for the sport, in lieu of a frying-pan, Hicks gave Mr. Stott a well-worn gold-pan that he had found somewhere.
Starting at the top with the party as spectators, Mr. Stott shot down the side like the proverbial bullet, but midway his whoops of ecstasy changed to cries of acute distress, owing to the fact that the friction wore a hole through the pan to the size of a dollar, and Mr. Stott, unable to stop his unique toboggan or endure the torture longer, turned over and finished the trip on his stomach.
Mr. Stott's eyes often rested upon Hicks afterward with a questioning look in them, but the cook's solicitude had been so genuine that cynical as his legal training had made him, he was obliged to think that it was purely an accident which might not happen one time in a million.
No point in the Park had been anticipated more than the camp at the Cañon where Mr. Hicks averred that the bears came in swarms to regale themselves upon the hotel garbage. Their tour thus far had been a disappointment in that the wild animals, with which they had been informed the Park teemed, were nowhere in evidence.
A deer had crossed the road ahead of them and they had gazed at a band of elk through Mr. Penrose's field-glasses, but otherwise they had seen nothing that they could not have seen in Pennsylvania.
Mr. Hicks' tales of the bears had aroused their interest to such a point that as soon as the camp site was selected they loaded their cameras and kodaks and set off immediately to get pictures while the light was favourable.