He retired to sleep shortly afterwards, for he and Leger commenced their labours at sunrise every day. A week later, towards dusk one evening, he and Sewell stopped near the edge of a deep ravine some distance from their camp in the ranges.
The torrent which had worn it out moaned far down in the shadow below, and the sombre firs rolled up to the edge of it two hundred yards away. Thickets of tall fern and salmon-berry hung over the brink, and for a score of yards or so a slope of soil and gravel sprinkled with tufts of juniper and dwarf firs ran down steeper than a roof. Then it broke off abruptly, and from where they stood Ingleby could not see the bottom of the gulf beneath, though he knew that the depth of such cañons is often several hundred feet. They had left their camp that morning, and one small black-tail deer, which Sewell had shot, was all they had to show for a day of strenuous labour.
"No way of getting across there," said Sewell as he flung himself down at the foot of a cedar. "It's a little unfortunate, too, because from what Tomlinson said it's a good bear country on the opposite side. One deer won't last very long even if we can manage to dry it, and there are parts of the black bear that are a good deal nicer than you might suppose."
"Have you ever tried them?" asked Ingleby.
Sewell laughed. "I have. In fact, I lived on black bear for rather longer than I cared about when I was up in the ranges once before. It's not unlike pork. I mean the kind the Canadian usually keeps for home consumption."
That a man, who could probably get nothing else, should have lived on bear meat is, of course, not necessarily any great recommendation, but the fact tended to increase Ingleby's respect for his companion. There was, it seemed, very little that Sewell had not done or borne for the cause of the Democracy, and Ingleby had already indued him with the qualities of Garibaldi. Other men, older and shrewder than he was, are, however, occasionally addicted to idealization; and Sewell could certainly ride and shoot as well as he could rouse the hopes and passions of the multitude—which was a good deal. Ingleby, who could do neither, had the Englishman's appreciation of physical capability, and it had once or twice been a grief to him to discover that other exponents of the opinions Sewell held were flabby, soft-fleshed men whose appearance warranted the belief that the adoption of the simple laborious life they lauded would promptly make an end of them.
The hard and wiry Sewell, who, while he preached his gospel, earned his bread by bodily toil, a man of comely presence and finished courtesy, Spartanly temperate in everything but speech, with unquestioned physical as well as moral courage, approached in his opinion the Paulinian ideal. It was, however, seldom that he permitted it to become apparent, for Ingleby, like most men who shape their lives by them, kept his deeper thoughts to himself, and on that occasion he complained about a boot which had split in an untimely fashion at a seam, until Sewell looked up.
"Did you hear anything?" he asked.
Ingleby, who had not lived very long in the bush, naturally heard nothing until the sudden crash of a rifle was flung back by the hillside. Then there was a sharp smashing of undergrowth, and it was plain to him that a beast of some description was travelling through the bush.
"A bear!" exclaimed Sewell. "The small black kind go straight at everything which lies between them and their covert. I fancy that one's partly crippled, too. It's your shot. If he breaks cover you might stop him for the man he belongs to."