“Yes,” replied Hugh, “I reckon we would, but I knew there were bears around here, and you never can tell just what a bear will do when it comes to a camp. Sometimes they are so shy that they will run away as soon as they smell the camp, at others they will prowl around it for a day without touching anything, or again, maybe they’ll go right into the tent and destroy everything that is there. I remember, one time down in Colorado, a bear came into camp while we were out prospecting and tore up and scattered around everything that we had; he even tore our blankets to pieces. We had to start into the settlements at once for a new outfit. Of course, we followed up the bear and killed him, but that wasn’t much satisfaction.
“We are mighty lucky that some of these horses did not break their necks, or get away and get lost in this brush. Of course, the chances are we could have trailed them and found them, but on the other hand if a snow had come before we did find them, we might have lost them for good. They’d have been likely to get tied up in the brush with their ropes and to have starved to death.”
“Yes,” said Joe, “we came out of it mighty lucky, but I never expect to understand how that bear wrapped herself up in that tent so that she couldn’t move.”
“No,” said Hugh, “that’s a mighty curious performance, and the queer part of it is that the tent is just as good as ever it was, except for the bullet holes and the blood on it. She didn’t tear it a mite, and that, of course, shows that somehow she must have got wrapped up in it just as the tent fell. If she’d had a chance to use her arms at all she would have torn the canvas to ribbons and we would never have got her.
“Well,” he continued, “it’s too late to start out prospecting now, and I reckon I’ll stay in camp the rest of the day and maybe clean the blood off this tent and generally get things in shape. What do you boys mean to do?”
“Why,” said Jack, “I don’t know. I believe I’d like to go up around this lake and follow up the valley until I come to that wall of rock at the head. I expect that must be the divide, isn’t it?”
“I reckon so,” said Hugh. “I believe if we get up on top of this next ridge ahead of us, we’ll see the waters running the other way and down into Flat Head Lake and so on into the Columbia and the Pacific Ocean.”
The boys started and proceeded up the valley. Close to the margin of the lake was a thick growth of alders, but these extended only a few yards back, and between them and the sharp slope of the mountain there was a level space thickly covered with huge rock fragments, among which they picked their way without much difficulty.
The day was bright and still, but the air so keen that the mosquitoes and flies were not troublesome.
Part way up the lake, Jack, who had been watching something on a great rock which rose above the water’s surface, reached out his hand and motioned to Joe not to move, and then, taking out his glasses, looked at the moving object, which proved to be two tiny harlequin ducks busily engaged in dressing their feathers.