The Rambler carried a crew of three this morning, Clayton Emmett, Cornelius Witters and Alexander Smith wick, boys of seventeen, who had explored the Amazon as well as the Columbia in the staunch little boat. There had been others on the previous trips, but now only these three were ready for the voyage up the wonderful stream which finds its waters in the frozen snows of the Rocky Mountains and plays hide-and-seek with them thousands of feet below the lips of the desert, in the most mysterious and wildly beautiful canyons known to the world.
Others might join them at up-river points, but the lads were content to make the journey just as they were. Now, as the sun rose higher and the air above the sands began to shimmer in the heat, they tumbled out of their bunks in the little cabin of the motor boat and, after invigorating baths in the Gulf, began preparations for breakfast.
“If we wait much longer,” Alex suggested, as he busied himself in making coffee, “we won’t want anything for breakfast but snowballs, it will be so hot, and we’re not likely to get them in this oven of a land. Who’s going to fry the cakes this morning? Oh, you would, would you!”
This last sentence was addressed to a grizzly bear cub which shambled into the cabin and placed two paws and a soft muzzle of a mouth on the table where the boy stood. This was “Teddy,” the cub Alex had captured during the trip down the Columbia river.
“I know what you want, Teddy Bear!” the boy added, as the cub winked a small eye at him. “You want to wait until I get the sugar out, then you want to empty one bowl into one bear! Now, you move on!”
The boy addressed the cub just as he would have spoken to one of his chums, and the bear appeared to understand what was said to him, for he grabbed angrily at an egg which Alex had brought to “settle” the coffee and made off with it, walking upright to the door, with the broken yolk marking his muzzle, paws and breast with cabalistic inscriptions in yellow.
Once on deck the cub was promptly chased over the rail into the Gulf, where he wallowed clumsily, with three boys laughing at his antics and penitent looks. When permitted to come, dripping and sullen, on board he sulked off to a corner and scolded every one who approached until Captain Joe sat down in front of him and grinned sarcastically at his plastered fur and stuck-up eyes.
Captain Joe was a white bulldog the boys had acquired on the Amazon trip. The bear and the dog were great chums. Captain Joe now sat making wrinkled faces at the disconsolate cub.
“Eat him up, Captain Joe!” Cornelius Witters, known to his friends as “Case,” shouted. “He stole an egg!”
The dog cocked one short ear and looked reproachfully at the cub.