The boys instinctively clutched their empty guns.
“Give me my rifle,” the hunter said, in the same tone. “I must load her an’ hev her ready in case we come on the critter sudd’nly. But I’ll let you do your own shootin’ ef I can. Fred, you must take the ax naow, an’ be awful keerful of it. Carry it blade aout from ye, an’ not over your shoulder. Naow foller me as easy’s you kin.”
They crept along, Indian file, for half an hour or more.
Tom’s foot sank into something that crunched under the moss.
“Snow!” he exclaimed; and indeed they all were standing on the edge of a huge snow bank.
Something about this appeared to please Solomon very much, though the boys could not tell why. But now he was stopping and pointing again. Ah! that was why the old hunter was gratified by finding that the trail crossed a snow bank. Master Bruin could pass through the thick scrub of the forest so deftly that even the keen eye of the best guide in Juneau could hardly distinguish the course of his journey. Not so when he crossed the snow. There was his track, plain enough.
“My! don’t it look like a boy’s barefoot mark?” exclaimed Tom, quivering with excitement. “Is he near here, do you think, Solomon? What sort of a bear is it? Is he a big one?”
Baranov answered at once, as he shouldered his pack and rifle again:
“The trail’s abaout an hour old. He’s a purty good-sized black b’ar, I should say. An’ it’s my opinion we can fetch him afore night.”
On they went, faster than before. Indeed, the boys soon noticed that they were now following a sort of beaten track—no other, Solomon assured them, than one of the famous “bear-paths,” thousands of which thread the deepest and loneliest jungles of Alaska.