"Let's go!" Alex Jackson said happily.
Ted led the six into the lightening morning. Since there was no snow, it was futile even to think of tracking a bear. Without any experience, these youngsters had no hope whatever of staging a successful drive, or putting four of their number in favorable shooting positions while the rest beat through the forest and tried to drive a bear past them. Only Alex Jackson and his brother were armed with rifles, therefore they were the only two who had even a slight chance of getting a bear, should one be sighted at long range. But the possibilities of even seeing a bear were so slim anyway that Ted had not wanted Alex to buy rifles for the other four.
There was just one faint hope.... This was the season of the Great Harvest. Frost had opened the pods on the beech trees and beech nuts had fallen like rain into the forest litter below. Tiny things, they were in vast quantity. Deer, bears, squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, foxes, practically every creature in the Mahela was spending almost full time filling itself with beech nuts or storing them away. Winter, that would bring hunger and lean bellies, was just ahead and well the wild things knew it.
If Ted posted his crew at favorable places among the beech trees and if they sat absolutely quiet, one or more of them might at least see a bear. Very definitely there was not much of a chance, but there was none at all if they did anything else.
Al had told of a lot of bears in Carter Valley and Ted took his hunters there. He left them in various strategic places where scraped and pawed leaves told their own story of being turned aside so that hungry creatures might partake of the beech nuts hidden beneath. Lacking snow, there was no foolproof way to tell just what had been scraping or pawing, but something had and it might be bears.
After the rest had been posted, Ted took Alex Jackson out to the rim of Carter Valley. The slope pitched sharply downwards and rose just as sharply on the other side, but here the valley was shallow, with perhaps a hundred yards to its floor. It was possibly another hundred yards from rim to rim, and the opposite rim was almost treeless. About a half mile away across the treeless slope was a crumbling slag pile. Years ago a vein of coal had been discovered here and mined as long as it paid off. But it had ceased to pay and had been abandoned long before Ted was born. Only the tunnel and the slag pile were left.
The opposite slope was covered with beech brush that would be jungle thick to anyone within it. But from this vantage point, eyes could penetrate the brush. Any bear going up or down the valley, and one might do just that, would certainly travel through the beech brush and any hunter posted here would surely have some good shooting. Ted turned to Alex Jackson.
"You stay here."
"Here?"
"Yes. Move as little as possible and make no noise. Watch the beech brush across there. Sooner or later a bear's going through it. I'll pick you up tonight."