70 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

a short story. We found our fat, bent-
legged editor from the city fairly broiling
in the little railroad town, away down at
the bottom of the hill in the yellow golden
fields of the Sacramento; and he was so
limp and so lazy that we had to lay hold
of him and get him out of the heat and up
into the heart of the Sierras by main force.

Only one hour of climbing and we got
up to where the little mountain streams
come tumbling out of snow-banks on every
side. The Sacramento, away down below
and almost under us, from here looks
dwindled to a brawling brook; a foamy
white thread twisting about the boulders
as big as meeting houses, plunging for-
ward, white with fear, as if glad to get
away—as if there was a bear back there
where it came from. We did not register.
No, indeed. This place here on Square
Creek, among the clouds, where the water
bursts in a torrent from the living rock,
we have named Mount Sinai. We own the
whole place for one mile square—the tall