Presently she began once more to clamber upward, her way comparatively easy now. Thus at last she came to the branch upon which, as on a bridge, the little brown bear had crossed to the ledge of rock. And together there came to her a distinct disappointment and a pleasurable surprise. Again the cub had slipped away from her; perhaps by now he was half a mile away and tumbling his awkward and terrified way among the crags. From below the ledge had seemed to be four or five feet wide; now she saw that it was nearer ten. The conformation of the rocks, beetling above it, had led her to imagine that a straight wall of cliff rose abruptly just at the back of the ledge. In reality they overhung the rudely level space like out-jutting eaves over the sun-deck that might have been carved to his taste by some old cliff dweller in front of his solitary retreat. For there was a cavern here under the frowning brow of granite, different from the many caves of which the girl knew in the rugged mountains only in that it was so roomy and at the same time so secret a place. Before she left her resting place, she saw the way the cub had gone. Leading upward from the extreme end of the ledge, at the right, there was a deep seam or crevice in the granite, almost filled and choked with fallen rocky debris from above, but affording a trail that even a man might travel to the top of the cliffs another fifty feet above. There was a quantity of fine sandy soil at the lower end of the narrow cut and on the edge of the ledge, and her trained eyes had slight difficulty in seeing the signs of little bruin's headlong flight. As he scurried upward he had left the marks of his toes in long unmistakable scratches. "I wonder," thought the girl with a little thrill at what her fancy pictured for her, "if any of the rest of the family are at home?" The mother bear had been killed; one cub was dead; the second had fled to the cliff tops. Here, where bears were growing scarcer every year, there was little danger of her meeting the _pater familias_. And yet-- "If I should meet a bear in there," she laughed to herself, "I wonder who'd be scared most?" She made herself as comfortable as she could, drew her camera from its case, focused it upon the yawning, black mouth of the cavern and waited a patient quarter of an hour, noiseless and listening and ready. For she was familiar enough with the California brown bear to know that he will not attack when the way of retreat is clear; that while, after he gets into a fight he extracts a great deal of delight from it, still if given his choice he would rather run and keep on moving until he had covered anywhere from ten to sixty miles. [Illustration: She made herself as comfortable as she could, drew her camera from its case, and waited a patient quarter of an hour.]