Then I wanted to go away and hide behind a thicket and kick myself, but what I actually did was to give Pups part of my meat. I reproached myself for my injustice to him. How often had I been deceived in the surface appearance of people and things and dogs! Most of our judgments are wrong. We do not see clearly.
By nine o'clock we were meeting our first obstacle--the little hill at which the sorrel horse had balked. Lo! rested and full of grain, he balked again! He ruined our start. He spoiled the teams. Lee had more patience than I would have had. He unhitched the lead team and in place of the sorrel put a saddle horse called Pacer. Then Doyle tried again and surmounted the hill. Our saddle horses slowly worked ahead over as rocky and rough a road as I ever traveled. Most of the time we could see over the rim down into the basin. Along here the rim appeared to wave in gentle swells, heavily timbered and thickly rock-strewn, with heads of canyons opening down to our right. I saw deer tracks and turkey tracks, neither of which occasioned me any thrills now. About the middle of the afternoon Edd bade us farewell and turned back. We were sorry to see him go, but as all the country ahead of us was as unfamiliar to him as to us there seemed to be no urgent need of him.
We encountered a long, steep hill up which the teams, and our saddle horses combined, could not pull the wagon. We unpacked it, and each of us, Romer included, loaded a bundle or box in front of his saddle, and took it up the hill. Then the teams managed the wagon. This incident happened four times in less than as many miles. The team horses, having had a rest from hard labor, had softened, and this sudden return to strenuous pulling had made their shoulders sore. They either could not or would not pull. We covered less than ten miles that day, a very discouraging circumstance. We camped in a pine grove close to the rim, a splendid site that under favorable circumstances would have been enjoyable. At sunset R.C. and Nielsen and Romer saw a black bear down under the rim. The incident was so wonderful for Romer that it brightened my spirits. "A bear! A big bear, Dad!... I saw him! He was alive! He stood up--like this--wagging his head. Oh! I saw him!"