For that little individual suddenly came up smiling, with his hand under his blouse.
As he came close up, he drew his tin plate from where it had been tucked up his breast.
“Stop velly little while. Quong washee—see gole.”
“Yes,” said Gunson, giving me a meaning look, and then taking a step or two nearer the stream; “it looks a likely place; but hallo, arn’t these bears’ footprints?”
He pointed to the moist earth close to the water’s edge, and both Esau and the little fellow ran to look.
Directly after Quong came trotting back in a quick, comical manner, tucking his plate up under his blouse, and seizing and shouldering his pack, an example followed by Esau, who was the quicker of the two, and he kept a sharp look out all the time.
“Now if you went behind that rock and roared, Gordon, or I was to fire my piece, there would be a stampede.”
I looked so ready to do what he first proposed, that Gunson said seriously—
“No, no; we have no time to waste;” and we went on up the valley, both Esau and Quong stepping out famously, while I was not at all sorry to leave our baiting-place behind, my liking for bears being decidedly in association with pits, and a pole up which they can climb for buns.
It was a wonderfully beautiful walk that morning, and we determined to try and arrange our halts better, for at the end of about half an hour we found that had we known we could have rested under a roof; two men, who gave us a very friendly welcome, having started a rough kind of ranch, in a level nook close down by the river. In fact they were disposed to be so hospitable that they were half offended because we went almost directly.