For a white man, he was not so bad a tracker. He knew a blaze on a tree, however much the bark had overgrown the slash. He knew that mosses and lichens denote the north side of either tree or rock, that a slope leads down to water, that deer tracks are guides in crossing a valley, but that elk slot shows the best route following a stream. The man who knows these things, even when tired or flustered, is not very easily bushed. Besides, when his mind was quiet, kindly spirits were able to guide his course, as they always will if one lets them.
For the first few hours he went in great contentment. Farther on, within the foldings of the foothills, he looked down a thousand feet or more upon the white earth-shaking torrent, whose northern bank was precipice unscalable. The southern incurved slope of the cañon, to which he clung like a fly on a wall, became more perilous as he advanced, for the moss was strewn with slippery pine needles, while here and there it was clad with snow, thawed, and then glazed by frost, so that he had to hew out a tread for every step. No sunlight ever falls upon that hillside, where the Douglas firs are a couple of hundred feet high, and fallen trunks perhaps thirty feet in girth lie rotting, sliding, not to be climbed, most dangerous to pass lest they break loose. Uphill the whole slope was ice-clad, downhill the stretches of open ground were more and more abrupt, and as the day waned, frozen, slippery as glass. Storm worked on, desperate because the sun was setting and soon it would be dark. It was then in the dusk that he met the grizzly, an old man bear, a giant, lean from the winter's fast, morosely hunting tree grubs for a scanty meal. He reared up from his work on the butt of a fallen tree, angry at being disturbed, barring Storm's way, determined to have meat.
Storm's stomach flopped over, so he said, for he was terrified.
"Brother," he pleaded nervously, "my woman is wounded, and I'm going to her. Have pity, and let me off! Brother, do you believe in the Sun Spirit? See this gun! If I trust in that I'm a rotten shot, but if I trust in the Sun Spirit——"
The man whirled the gun round his head and launched it flying down into the cañon.
"Now, God," he cried, "it's Your turn!"
The bear dropped on all fours, and with a snarl of defiance over his left shoulder dared Storm to follow him.
"Spirit in the Sun! Thanks!" cried Storm. "That gun is Yours."
So he followed the bear, who knew the way down to the river, where there was ground level enough for camping. He went upstream a little, out of sight from the gun, lest he be tempted to steal it back again.
So in the dusk he made a little fire, ate dried meat, hung up the remainder beyond the reach of roving porcupines, and slept. For fear lest the bear come back to eat his body, he dared not leave it, but mother came in his dream to say he had done well. And Rain was better.