CHAPTER III The Mescalero Valley
It had been our intention to take off the bear's hide and carry it home with us, but we found that he was such a shabby old specimen that the skin was not worth the carriage, so, after cutting out his claws as trophies, we went on to inspect our sheep. Here again we found that "the game was not worth the candle," as the saying is, for the bear had torn the carcass so badly as to render it useless, while the horns, which at a distance and seen against the sky-line, had looked so imposing, proved to be too much chipped and broken to be any good.
My rifle we found lying beside the bear, it also having slid down the ice-slope when I dropped it.
"Well, Frank," remarked my companion, "our hunt so far doesn't seem to have had much result—unless you count the experience as something."
"Which I most decidedly do," I interjected.
"You are right enough there," replied Dick; "there's no gainsaying that. Well, what I was going to say was that the day is early yet, and if you like there is still time for us to go off and have a try for a deer. I should like to take home something to show for our day's work."
"Very well," said I. "Which way should we take? There are no deer up here among the rocks, I suppose."
"Why, I propose that we go up over this ridge here and try the country to the southwest. I've never been down there myself, having always up to the present hunted to the north and east of camp; but I've often thought of trying it: it is a likely-looking country, quite different from that on the Mosby side of the divide: high mesa land cut up by deep cañons. What do you say?"
"Anything you like," I answered. "It is all new to me, and one direction is as good as another."