While roaming above timber-line he did not take the precaution to travel with his face in the wind. He could see toward every point of the compass. He was ambling easily along, but I knew that his senses were wide awake--that his sentinel nose never slept and that his ears never ceased to hear. Climbing to the very summit of a snow-covered ridge, he lay down with his back to the wind. Evidently he depended upon the wind to carry the warning scent of any danger behind him, while he was on the lookout for anything in front of him. Nothing could approach nearer than half a mile without his knowing it. He looked this way and that. After only a short rest he arose and started on again. I hoped that some time I should be able to photograph Old Timberline at twenty-five or thirty feet. But at all times, too, I was more eager to watch him, to see what he was eating, where he went, and what he did. I was constantly trying to get as close as possible. Of course I had ever to keep in mind that he must not see, hear, nor scent me. I had to be particularly careful to prevent his scenting me. Often in hastening to reach a point of vantage I had to stop, note the topography, and change my direction, because a wind-current up an unsuspected cañon before me might carry news of my presence to the bear. Near mountain-tops the wind is deflected this way and that by ridges and cañons. In a small area the prevailing west wind may be a north wind, and a short distance farther on it may blow from the southwest. Often, when the bear was somewhere in a cañon, I climbed entirely out of it, to avoid the likelihood of being scented, and scurried ahead on a plateau. Usually I followed in the bear's trail, but sometimes I made short cuts. So long as Old Timberline remained on the moorland summit of this treeless ridge, I could not get close to him. But when he arose and started down the ridge, I hurried down the slope, hoping to get ahead and hide in a place of concealment near which he might pass. I kept out of sight in the woods and hastened forward for two miles, then climbed up and hid in a rock-slide on the rim of the ridge.