"Please, Mr. Rivers," interrupted Roger, his curiosity overcoming his sense of politeness, "won't you tell me about the bear?" The bushy brown eyebrows of the explorer lowered at the interruption, but the boy went on hastily: "I've never met any one before who had even seen a real bear loose, much less had a fight with one. I don't want to seem rude, but I do want to hear it so much." "You are persistent, at least, Doughty," answered the other, with a suspicion of annoyance in his manner, "but sometimes that's not such a bad thing. Well, if you want to hear the story so much I'll tell it to you, and perhaps it may show the sort of thing that sometimes does come about on the trail. It was this way: "Some four years ago, the Survey sent me on a trip which included the mapping of a portion of the foothills of the Mt. St. Elias Range. It is a rugged and barren part of the country, but although rough in the extreme, no obstacles had been encountered that hard labor and long hours could not overcome. It was a packing trip and everything had progressed favorably, there was plenty of forage, the streams had been fairly passable, and we feasted twice a day on moose or mountain sheep. For days and weeks together we had hardly been out of sight of caribou. They had a curious way of approaching, either one at a time or else in quite large bands, coming close to the pack-train, then breaking away suddenly at full gallop and returning in large circles. Even the crack of a rifle could not scare them out of their curiosity, and we never shot any except when we needed meat. "One day I got back to camp with the boys a good deal earlier than usual, somewhere about four o'clock. We had started very early that morning, I remember, trying to gain a peak somewhat hard of access. It was difficult enough, so difficult in fact, that the trial had to be abandoned that day, as we found it could only be approached from the other side. Of course our arrival sent George, the camp cook, into the most violent kind of a hurry. He mentioned to me, as I remembered later, that he had shot at a Kodiak bear somewhere about noon, and though he had found tracks with blood in them, he did not believe that he had wounded the bear sufficiently to make it worth while to track him. But George was hustling at top speed to get dinner, and no one paid much attention to him, I least of all, for I was trying to figure out the best way to climb that peak next day.