"'I wrote you this morning about the lovely getting-acquainted trip to Lone Mountain. Well, I had just come back from walking down to the main road and giving my letter to the carrier, who drives in a funny little canvas house on wheels, when Dick and William rode up to the door and asked if we girls didn't want to ride up into the mountains back of Bear Canyon and visit the bear-traps. Mr. Hunter and the three boys had gone to Willow Creek, but it's a fifty mile ride over there and back, and he thought it was too much for Mary and Vivian and me--much as we wanted to go.'" "Fifty miles on horseback!" murmured Mrs. Winthrop. "I should hope so!" "'Virginia had insisted on staying with us, and Aunt Nan (we all call her that now) had gone to Mystic Lake with Donald's brother, so we four girls were all alone. Virginia said "Yes" on the spot, and Mary and I were wild at the prospect. Vivian's eyes got big when Dick said "bear-traps," but she wouldn't let us know she was afraid. Really, you'd be surprised at what a good sport Vivian's getting to be. "'We said we'd be ready in a minute and hurried into our riding clothes while Dick and William went to saddle our horses. All the time we kept fairly _pelting_ Virginia with questions. _Where were the traps? What did they look like? Did she really think we'd get a bear?_ She wouldn't tell us much of anything, except that bears were not uncommon at all, and that the men liked to get them, because they were a nuisance to the cattle. I think we were all seized with different feelings as we got ready. Vivian's came out and sat upon her face. You just knew she was hoping every bear in the Rockies had been safe at home for a week; Mary kept saying the trip up the trail would be so beautiful, but something told you she was secretly hoping for a greater adventure; and I--well, I couldn't decide between the triumph of bringing a real bear home, and the awfulness of seeing one caught and killed. "'In half an hour we were off. Hannah had given us each some sandwiches in a bundle, which we rolled in our slickers and tied on our saddles. Dick carried the big gun in a holster, and William a coil of rope. Instead of turning off on the Lone Mountain trail we went farther up the canyon, past the little school-house where Virginia used to go, and on toward where the canyon walls were great cliffs instead of foot-hills. It certainly was the _beariest-looking_ place I have ever seen. You could just imagine hundreds of them taking sun-baths on the rocks, surrounded by their devoted families. "'By and by we turned into a rocky, precipitous trail, and went higher and higher. It was much steeper than on the getting-acquainted trip. Sometimes it just seemed as though the horses couldn't make it, but they did. My horse is a perfect wonder! He never hesitates at anything. His name is Cyclone!'"