The valley where the flying machines had landed has been called a little bowl between two parallel ridges. The word bowl describes it exactly.
It was as round as if dug out by the hand of man. The bottom was covered with lush grass, and through the center a small stream trickled from ridge to ridge. Where the rivulet started and where it ended no one knew. For years the valley had been known as the Place of the Lost Brook.
The sides were heavily timbered to the very summits which shut in the bowl. Through some freak of nature, however, there was no undergrowth or trees at the very bottom. Perhaps the soil, being a wash from the rocks around in prehistoric days, provided only sufficient nourishment for the grass which grew there.
After walking around the grassy bowl, and crossing the stream at least a dozen times, Kit turned his face toward the wooded slope to the west. He was soon in the heart of a forest, the trees of which interlaced their boughs far above his head. The sun shone warmly on the softly swaying tops, and there was a stir of insect life in the air. He knew that the summit of the ridge he was climbing was merely a convex wrinkle in the side of the lofty mountains.
His idea as he climbed steadily upward, always keeping his eye on the little valley where the machines lay, was to reach the top and look into the next canyon in the hope of seeing the flying machine which had been observed during the dark hours of the night. Wearied from his long climb, he finally sat down and leaned against the bole of a sprawling sycamore tree.
Birds were winging their way among the branches of the trees, and the drone of insect life was in his ears. In fact, the boy would have been asleep in another moment if an unexpected thing had not occurred.
The bushes directly in front of him parted, and, with a grunt like that of an overfed hog, a gigantic grizzly bear lumbered into the little clearing under the boughs of the tree.
Kit had never seen a grizzly bear before. In fact, his knowledge concerning all wild animals was limited. At that moment, however, instinct told him that the bear was not friendly to his species.
At first it seemed that the animal was equally surprised with the boy, for he drew hastily back, his pig-like eyes glaring viciously.
The fellow was evidently not very hungry, but at the same time he did not propose to overlook a feast of boy. The next thing Kit saw was a figure advancing toward him on a pair of hind legs which seemed to him to be larger than the trunk of the tree against which he leaned.