Leo grinned, but sat watching the snow-slide more indifferently than the others, the work of the great forces of nature being accepted as a matter of course in his philosophy. The others, however, could not repress their wonder. The slide ran for several minutes, sometimes subsiding and then breaking out in full force again, as the vast mass of snow, dammed up by the edge of the rock wall, would from time to time assume such proportions that the snow behind it finally drove it forward over the brink. Thus in successive cascades it ran on, until at last it died away in a faint dribble of thin white. Silence once more reigned in the valley. With their glasses they could now plainly see a vast mass of white choking the upper valley almost entirely across.
“Now, boys,” said their leader, “there is something in this mountain work besides just hunting bear. The people who live in the lowlands don’t always stop to think very much where their rivers come from and what keeps them up. Here you have seen the birth of a river, or a part of a river. That mass of packed snow will lie there nearly all summer, just melting a little bit at times, and feeding this stream which runs right past us here. Still farther back in the mountains you’ll see the glaciers—great ice-fields which never thaw out completely. These are the upper sponges of the mountains, squeezed each year by the summer sun. That is why the rivers run and keep on running.”
“It’s wonderful to me,” said Jesse. “I’m glad we saw that—and glad, too, that we weren’t camped right where it came down.”
“Yes,” assented his uncle. “In that case there would have been no possible help for us. But good hunters in the high country always take care not to pitch their camp where a slide can possibly come down on them. We wouldn’t have been more than so many straws under that mass of snow and rocks.”
They sat for some time in the bright morning sun, their wet clothing gradually becoming dryer upon them as they moved about a little now and then, or resumed their wait with Leo on the log. The young Indian sat motionless, apparently indifferent to all discomforts, and with no interest in anything except the controlling impulse of the hunt. His keen eye roved from time to time over all the faces of the slides near them in the valley, especially the one directly in front of them at the right. Presently they noted that he was gazing intently for some time at one spot, although he said nothing.
“Do you see anything, Leo?” asked John, idly.
“Yes, see ’um four bears, grizzlum,” said Leo, quietly.
At once all the others started into interest. “Where are they, Leo?” demanded Jesse. “I can’t see them.”
“Four grizzlum,” reaffirmed Leo, quietly. “Up high. Up high, two; more low, two.”
Indeed, at last they saw that the hunter was not mistaken. There were four bears all at once on the surface of the slides, but they were almost concealed by the tall vegetation which in places had grown upon it.