At my left it dropped into a dim, abysmal cañon. In front of me was the bear. Behind me was Perry. I shouted to him in warning, and then I raised my rifle and fired into the broad breast of the creature. There was no time to take aim; the thing was too close upon me. But that my bullet took effect was evident from the howl of rage and pain that broke from the frothing jowls. It didn’t stop him, though. I fired again, and then he was upon me. Down I went beneath his ton of maddened, clawing flesh and bone and sinew. I thought my time had come. I remember feeling sorry for poor old Perry, left all alone in this inhospitable, savage world. And then of a sudden I realized that the bear was gone and that I was quite unharmed. I leaped to my feet, my rifle still clutched in my hand, and looked about for my antagonist. I thought that I should find him farther down the trail, probably finishing Perry, and so I leaped in the direction I supposed him to be, to find Perry perched upon a projecting rock several feet above the trail. My cry of warning had given him time to reach this point of safety. There he squatted, his eyes wide and his mouth ajar, the picture of abject terror and consternation. “Where is he?” he cried when he saw me. “Where is he?” “Didn’t he come this way?” I asked. “Nothing came this way,” replied the old man. “But I heard his roars—he must have been as large as an elephant.” “He was,” I admitted; “but where in the world do you suppose he disappeared to?” Then came a possible explanation to my mind. I returned to the point at which the bear had hurled me down and peered over the edge of the cliff into the abyss below. Far, far down I saw a small brown blotch near the bottom of the canon. It was the bear. My second shot must have killed him, and so his dead body, after hurling me to the path, had toppled over into the abyss. I shivered at the thought of how close I, too, must have been to going over with him. It took us a long time to reach the carcass, and arduous labor to remove the great pelt. But at last the thing was accomplished, and we returned to camp dragging the heavy trophy behind us. Here we devoted another considerable period to scraping and curing it. When this was done to our satisfaction we made heavy boots, trousers, and coats of the shaggy skin, turning the fur in. From the scraps we fashioned caps that came down around our ears, with flaps that fell about our shoulders and breasts. We were now fairly well equipped for our search for a pass to the opposite side of the Mountains of the Clouds. Our first step now was to move our camp upward to the very edge of the perpetual snows which cap this lofty range. Here we built a snug, secure little hut, which we provisioned and stored with fuel for its diminutive fireplace. With our hut as a base we sallied forth in search of a pass across the range.