After a time we heard him shoot. Then we heard him shout. Then there was a long silence.
Then suddenly, high and wild, his voice rang out through the tree tops down in the deep canyon.
“Come down! Come quick! I’ve treed a bear! Come and help me catch him; come quick! Oh, Moses! come quick, and—and—and catch him!”
My brother came tearing down the steep hill on his side of the canyon as I descended from my side. We got down about the same time, but the trees in their dense foliage, together with the compact underbrush, concealed everything. We could see neither bear nor boy.
This Oregon is a damp country, warm and wet; nearly always moist and humid, and so the trees are covered with moss. Long, gray, sweeping moss swings from the broad, drooping boughs of fir and pine and cedar and nearly every bit of sunlight is shut out in these canyons from one year’s end to the other. And it rains here nearly half of the year; and then these densely wooded canyons are as dark as caverns. I know of nothing so grandly gloomy as these dense Oregon woods in this long rainy season.
I laid my ear to the ground after I got a glimpse of my brother on the other side of the canyon, but could hear nothing at all but the beating of my heart.
Suddenly there was a wild yell away up in the dense boughs of a big mossy maple tree that leaned over toward my side of the canyon. I looked and looked with eagerness, but could see nothing whatever.
Then again came the yell from the top of the big leaning maple. Then there was a moment of silence, and then the cry: “Oh, Moses! Why don’t you come, I say, and help me catch him?” By this time I could see the leaves rustling. And I could see the boy rustling, too.
And just behind him was a bear. He had treed the bear, sure enough!