"Isn't there one behind me?"
"About twenty feet away," I would say.
"Good Lord!" But he went on drawing. I have that picture now. It is very good, but my eyes have the look of a scared rabbit.
Our friend still clung in the tree. The other man had ridden back to the hotel for camera films. Time went on and he did not return. We made would-be facetious remarks about his courage—from our own pinnacle. Almost an hour! The sketch was nearly finished, and twilight was falling. Still he had not come. Then he appeared. He had taken the wrong trail, and had been riding those bear-infested regions alone. He was smiling, but pale. To visit bears in a party is one thing; to ride alone, with fleeting black and brown figures skulking behind fallen timber, is another. Not for a long time, I think, will that gentleman forget the hour or so when he was lost in the forest, with bears
"Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks,
In Vallombrosa."
The poetic quotation is my own idea. What he said was entirely different. As a matter of fact, his own expression was: "Hell, the place is full of them!"
At last, very quietly, Mr. Higgins got up.
"Here's a grizzly," he said. "You might stand near the horses."
We did. The grizzly looked the exact size of a seven-passenger automobile with a limousine top, and he had the same gift of speed. The black bears looked at him and ran. I looked at him and wanted to. The artist put away his sketch, and we strolled toward the horses. They had not objected to the black bears, beyond watching them with careful eyes. But now they pulled and flung about to free themselves. Wherever he goes, a grizzly bear owns his entire surroundings. He carries a patent of ownership.