My reflection did not carry me at that time to any positive convictions of what was truest and best. The only conclusions I eventually arrived at were that I was sore and bruised and dirty and torn--that I would be happy if the bear got away--that I had lost my mean horse and was glad therefore--that I would have half a dozen horses and rifles upon my next hunt--and lastly that I would not be in any hurry to tell about mistaking a steer for a bear, and climbing a tree. Indeed these last facts have been religiously kept secret until chronicled here.
Shortly afterward, as I was making a lame and slow headway toward Horton Thicket, where I hoped to find a trail out, I heard Edd yelling, and I answered. Presently we met. He was leading my horse, and some of the hounds, notably Old Tom and Dan, were with him.
"He got away down in the breaks," replied Edd. "George is tryin' to call the hounds back. What happened to you? I heard you shoot."
"My horse didn't care much for me or the brush," I replied. "He left me--rather suddenly. And--I took a shot at what I thought was a bear."
"I seen him once," said Edd, with eyes flashing. "Was just goin' to smoke him up when he jumped out of sight."
My mortification and apprehension were somewhat mitigated when I observed that Edd was dirty, ragged, and almost as much disheveled as I was. I had feared he would see in my appearance certain unmistakable evidences that I had made a tenderfoot blunder and then run for my life. But Edd took my loss of hat, and torn coat, and general bedraggled state as a matter of course. Indeed I somehow felt a little pride at his acceptance of me there in the flesh.
We rode around the end of this slope, gradually working down into Horton Thicket, where a wild confusion of dense timber engaged my sight. Presently George trotted up behind us with the other dogs. "We lost him down on the hot dry ridges. Hounds couldn't track him," was all George said. Thereupon Edd blew four blasts upon his hunting-horn, which were signals to those on the stands above that the hunt was over for the day.
Even in the jungle tropics I had never seen such dense shade as this down in Horton Thicket. The timber grew close and large, and the foliage was matted, letting little sunlight through. Dark, green and brown, fragrant, cool thicket indeed it was. We came to a huge spruce tree, the largest I ever saw--Edd said eight feet through at the base, but he was conservative. It was a gnarled, bearded, gray, old monarch of the forest, with bleached, dead top. For many years it had been the home of swarms of wild honey bees. Edd said more than one bee-hunter had undertaken to cut down this spruce. This explained a number of deeply cut notches in the huge trunk. "I'll bet Nielsen could chop it down," declared Edd. I admitted the compliment to our brawny Norwegian axe-wielder, but added that I certainly would not let him do it, whether we were to get any honey or not.