He travelled slowly and in a zigzag fashion, stealing cautiously around great masses of boulders, sniffing up each coulee that he came to, and investigating the timber clumps and windfalls.
At one time he would be so high up that he was close to the bare shale, and again so low down that he walked in the sand and gravel of the creek.

He caught many scents in the wind, but none that held or deeply interested him.

Once, up near the shale, he smelled goat; but he never went above the shale for meat.

Twice he smelled sheep, and late in the afternoon he saw a big ram looking down on him from a precipitous crag a hundred feet above.
Lower down his nose touched the trails of porcupines, and often his head hung over the footprints of caribou as he sniffed the air ahead.
There were other bears in the valley, too.

Mostly these had travelled along the creek-bottom, showing they were blacks or cinnamons.