“Certainly not,” said Rob; “I have my ax, and my compass, and my match box, and a little something to eat, besides my rifle. I might be able to get clear through to the railroad or back to Tête Jaune if I had to. But I’ll not have to. So-long.”
“That’s good boy,” said Leo, approvingly, after Rob left and as they saw his sturdy figure trudging steadily onward toward the shoulder of the mountain.
“They’re all good boys,” replied Uncle Dick. “I’m going to make hunters out of all of’em. And now, just as a part of their education, they’ll all help us to flesh out this bear-hide.”
Jesse, hunting around on the side of the mountain, found a bit of coarse stone which John and he used as a whetstone to sharpen up their knives. They knew well enough that work on the coarse surface of a bear-hide dulls a knife very quickly. It was an hour or two before their leader was satisfied with the preparation of the big hide.
“I wish we had more salt,” said he; “but as it happens Moise has put in a little tin of pepper, and pepper is very good to use around the ears and nose of a fresh bear-hide. The main thing is to flesh the hide carefully, and to skin out all the thick parts around the ears and nose very carefully indeed. Then you dry the hide—not in the bright sunlight, but in the shade—and never let it get near a fire. Some hides get grease-burned from bad fleshing and bad drying. I think this one’ll do all right, though, for we made a pretty good job at scraping it down.”
“Plenty all right now,” said Leo. “Go hunt.”
“Which way next, Leo?” inquired John.
Leo pointed up the valley. “Plenty slide farther up. S’pose we stay here three, four days, get plenty grizzlum. Best tam late in day. Maybe-so get ’um now, maybe-so not. Don’t know.”
“Yes,” said John; “it’s too bad we have to start back to camp in just the best part of the day. But we’ve agreed to do that, so all we can do is to do our best. I suppose bears do sometimes come out before evening?”
“Once in a while,” said Uncle Dick, “a bear will come out on the slide just to look around, as I’ve told you. There are no absolute rules about it. They don’t like the sun any too well, but sometimes there is a heap of snow on a slide, usually near the foot of it, and I’ve seen two or three bears at once come out and lie down on the snow to get cool. Then sometimes they like to go out where they can get a bare rock to scratch themselves against. Besides that, I don’t suppose all the bears get hungry at just the same time, and come out on the slide when they hear a dinner-bell ring. Take it all in all, grizzly-hunting is about as hard to classify as anything you’ll find. It’s one thing that would make a man believe in luck, good or bad. Anyhow, we’ll go and try our luck.”