The horses having been corralled during the day’s wait, everything was arranged for the morning start. The next day I rose bright and early to commence the final stage of the journey. When the last pack had been “cinched” and everything was in readiness, we began our journey to the hunting grounds. It was a long, monotonous ride--much of it through thick timber with no stop for lunch or rest, because the heavily laden beasts could not lie down with their packs on, and we did not care to delay them. At length, after crossing a rocky ravine and a swift-running stream and climbing a steep ascent, we arrived at Two-Ocean Pass. There we found an ideal spot to camp. In a short time everything was unpacked, and the two tents were pitched. The tired beasts that had borne the brunt of the work tumbled over and rubbed their backs in the dust and snorted with delight.
The next morning I started out on horseback with Sheffield, while the ranchman, Shives, whom I had engaged as cook and general helper, remained behind and minded camp. We took with us several dogs, because they might be useful in rounding up lions or “cats,” as they frequently call the cougar or wildcats in that section. The day passed without result, except that I lost my Seitz spy-glasses, which hung on the pummel of my saddle by a leather strap; this had evidently caught on something and snapped. When the guide heard of the loss, he exclaimed with great confidence, “We must find them tomorrow.” I was somewhat inclined to be skeptical about his being able to recover the lost property, but I assented to his going out with a little dog he called Maiden, a cross of a black-and-tan foxhound and a bloodhound, as intelligent an animal as I ever saw. He came back in a few hours with the glasses, and I was curious to learn how he managed to discover them. While following our trail of the day before, he had stopped to call the dog, which had fallen behind and stood yelping at something which he had passed; upon going to the spot, he found the glasses. They were not immediately in the line of the trail, but had rolled down hill and were some dozen feet away from it. I wonder if that dog had overheard our previous conversation and knew what we wanted!