"Hello," said Hugh, "we're surely in great luck to-day. If this was in old times, I'd say we would have to look out for Indians to-night. So much good luck is likely to be followed by some that is bad.
"Say," he went on, "we haven't time to look around much now, but after we get through skinning these beaver I want you to see what the bears did here last night. They regularly cleaned up all the meat we left here, and one of them has been up that tree trying to get at the carcass that you hung up there."
Jack dropped his load off the pack horse and pulled the beaver over near to Hugh, and while he did so he was looking at the tree and could see the scratches on the bark where some animal had climbed up.
"But, Hugh," he said, "they are grizzly bears, and I thought that grizzlies never climbed trees."
"Well," said Hugh, "the big ones don't. I reckon it's because they're too heavy and their front claws are too long, but the little fellows can scramble up a tree pretty well, and often do. Many a time I've come on an old bear with cubs and seen the young ones race up a tree while the mother footed it off through the timber."
"Then you think it was a cub that climbed up this tree?"
"Yes," said Hugh, "a cub, and a little one, too. If you look at the claw marks on the tree, you'll think the same thing."
"Well," said Jack, "we'll have to take these bears in, I guess."
"Yes," said Hugh, "we'll do that, and we can try it 'most any time. You see that little knoll over there on the prairie? By coming down that ravine beyond it, and creeping up to the edge of the knoll, we can get a shot at them any time, if they are here."