"I wouldn't go so far as to call it tame," responded the head of the Alaskan work; "no, it's not tame, but you can't expect a different adventure three times a day, like meals. We don't go out to find adventures, but to do surveying, and are only too thankful when the work goes ahead without any interruption. But of course little incidents do occur. I was considerably delayed in scaling a glacier once, and you're bound to strike a forest fire occasionally, but things like that don't worry us. Rapids are a daily story, too, and of course there are lots of bears."
"Lots of bears!" exclaimed Roger, his eyes lighting up in the discovery that the days of adventure had not yet all passed by, "have you ever been chased by a grizzly bear?"
"Worse than that!" The old-timer was smiling broadly at his would-be follower's interest, being roused from his customary semi-taciturnity by the boy's impetuous enthusiasm. "I thought a Kodiak bear had me one time."
"Worse?" The boy leaned forward almost out of his chair in excitement. "Is a Kodiak bear fiercer than a grizzly? Do tell me about it, Mr. Rivers!"
"Oh, there wasn't much to it, I got away all right." Then, with intent to change the subject, he continued, "but about this desire of yours to go to the field——"
"Please, Mr. Rivers," interrupted Roger, his curiosity overcoming his sense of politeness, "won't you tell me about the bear?"
The bushy brown eyebrows of the explorer lowered at the interruption, but the boy went on hastily:
"I've never met any one before who had even seen a real bear loose, much less had a fight with one. I don't want to seem rude, but I do want to hear it so much."
"You are persistent, at least, Doughty," answered the other, with a suspicion of annoyance in his manner, "but sometimes that's not such a bad thing. Well, if you want to hear the story so much I'll tell it to you, and perhaps it may show the sort of thing that sometimes does come about on the trail. It was this way:
"Some four years ago, the Survey sent me on a trip which included the mapping of a portion of the foothills of the Mt. St. Elias Range. It is a rugged and barren part of the country, but although rough in the extreme, no obstacles had been encountered that hard labor and long hours could not overcome. It was a packing trip and everything had progressed favorably, there was plenty of forage, the streams had been fairly passable, and we feasted twice a day on moose or mountain sheep. For days and weeks together we had hardly been out of sight of caribou. They had a curious way of approaching, either one at a time or else in quite large bands, coming close to the pack-train, then breaking away suddenly at full gallop and returning in large circles. Even the crack of a rifle could not scare them out of their curiosity, and we never shot any except when we needed meat.