The entire party was waiting when they reached the hotel, and Mills led the way, back by another road into the cedars, which were now very dark. A lot of other guests were moving in the same direction. After a way, a strong smell began to assault the nose.
“Smells to me like swill,” said Bob.
“Garbage, Robert, is a nicer word,” said his mother.
“Well, it doesn’t change the smell any,” he answered.
Mills said nothing, but walked on, while the smell grew stronger, and in a moment, by the dim light, they saw that the hotel garbage had been dumped on both sides of the roadway. Just ahead a group of people had stopped, and Mills led the way up to this group.
“There,” said he, “I promised you one, but I see five.”
“Where? I don’t see anything,” said Congressman Elkins.
He was standing on the extreme edge of the road, and just as he spoke something big and dark and mysterious gave a grunt and with a crash of broken sticks reared up not six feet from him.
The congressman jumped back and nearly upset Mrs. Jones, who screamed.
At her scream, two other dark forms close to the road moved, and in the dim light the party could see one of these forms go ten feet up the trunk of a half fallen tree. Peering into the dark of the woods, Joe could at last count, as the Ranger said, five bears, two of them huge ones, three smaller (including the one up the tree), and not one of them more than fifty feet away.