READY FOR A WALK
No matter what the weather, he usually slept outdoors. He understood, however, that he was welcome to come into my cabin day or night, and was a frequent caller. In the cabin he was dignified and never used it as a place of amusement.
[IV]
Scotch enjoyed being with me, and great times we had together. Many of our best days were in the wilds. Here he often suffered from hunger, cold, hardships, and sometimes from accident; yet never did he complain. Usually he endured the unpleasant things as a matter of course.
Though very lonely when left by himself, he never allowed this feeling to cause a slighting of duty. On one occasion he was supremely tried but did his duty as he understood it and was faithful under circumstances of loneliness, danger, and possible death.
At the close of one of our winter trips, Scotch and I started across the Continental Divide of the Rocky Mountains in face of weather conditions that indicated a snowstorm or a blizzard before we could gain the other side. We had eaten the last of our food twenty-four hours before, and could no longer wait for fair weather. So off we started to scale the snowy steeps of the cold, gray heights a thousand feet above. The mountains already were deeply snow-covered and it would have been a hard trip even without the discomforts and dangers of a storm.