Only six or seven miles across country, but it was late night when Lan
arrived.

Tampico gladly turned over half of the promised dust. That night they
camped together, and, of course, no Bear appeared.

In the morning Lan went back to the canon and found, as expected, that
the Bear had returned and killed the remaining sheep.

The hunter piled the rest of the carcasses in an open place, lightly
sprinkled the Grizzly's trail with some very dry brush, then making a
platform some fifteen feet from the ground in a tree, he rolled up in
his blanket there and slept.

An old Bear will rarely visit a place three nights in succession; a
cunning Bear will avoid a trail that has been changed overnight; a
skilful Bear goes in absolute silence. But Jack was neither old,
cunning, nor skilful. He came for the fourth time to the canon of the
sheep. He followed his old trail straight to the delicious mutton
bones. He found the human trail, but there was something about it that
rather attracted him. He strode along on the dry boughs. "Crack!" went
one; "crack-crack!" went another; and Kellyan arose on the platform
and strained his eyes in the gloom till a dark form moved into the
opening by the bones of the sheep. The hunter's rifle cracked, the
Bear snorted, wheeled into the bushes, and, crashing away, was gone.



IX. FIRE AND WATER


That was Jack's baptism of fire, for the rifle had cut a deep
flesh-wound in his back. Snorting with pain and rage, he tore through
the bushes and traveled on for an hour or more, then lay down and
tried to lick the wound, but it was beyond reach. He could only rub it
against a log. He continued his journey back toward Tallac, and there,
in a cave that was formed of tumbled rocks, he lay down to rest. He
was still rolling about in pain when the sun was high and a strange
smell of fire came searching through the cave; it increased, and
volumes of blinding smoke were about him. It grew so choking that he
was forced to move, but it followed him till he could bear it no
longer, and he dashed out of another of the ways that led into the
cavern. As he went he caught a distant glimpse of a man throwing wood
on the fire by the in-way, and the whiff that the wind brought him
said: "This is the man that was last night watching the sheep."
Strange as it may seem, the woods were clear of smoke except for a
trifling belt that floated in the trees, and Jack went striding away
in peace. He passed over the ridge, and finding berries, ate the first
meal he had known since killing his last sheep. He had wandered on,
gathering fruit and digging roots, for an hour or two, when the smoke
grew blacker, the smell of fire stronger. He worked away from it, but
in no haste. The birds, deer, and wood hares were now seen scurrying
past him. There was a roaring in the air. It grew louder, was coming
nearer, and Jack turned to stride after the wood things that fled.

The whole forest was ablaze; the wind was rising, and the flames,
gaining and spreading, were flying now like wild horses. Jack had no
place in his brain for such a thing; but his instinct warned him to
shun that coming roaring that sent above dark clouds and flying
fire-flakes, and messengers of heat below, so he fled before it, as
the forest host was doing. Fast as he went, and few animals can outrun
a Grizzly in rough country, the hot hurricane was gaining on him. His
sense of danger had grown almost to terror, terror of a kind that he
had never known before, for here there was nothing he could fight;
nothing that he could resist. The flames were all around him now;
birds without number, hares, and deer had gone down before the red
horror. He was plunging wildly on through chaparral and manzanita
thickets that held all feebler things until the fury seized them; his
hair was scorching, his wound was forgotten, and he thought only of
escape when the brush ahead opened, and the Grizzly, smoke-blinded,
half roasted, plunged down a bank and into a small clear pool. The fur
on his back said "hiss," for it was sizzling-hot. Down below he went,
gulping the cool drink, wallowing in safety and unheat. Down below the
surface he crouched as long as his lungs would bear the strain, then
slowly and cautiously he raised his head. The sky above was one great
sheet of flame. Sticks aflame and flying embers came in hissing
showers on the water. The air was hot, but breathable at times, and he
filled his lungs till he had difficulty in keeping his body down
below. Other creatures there were in the pool, some burnt, some dead,
some small and in the margin, some bigger in the deeper places, and
one of them was close beside him. Oh, he knew that smell; fire--all
Sierra's woods ablaze--could not disguise the hunter who had shot at
him from the platform, and, though he did not know this, the hunter
really who had followed him all day, and who had tried to smoke him
out of his den and thereby set the woods ablaze. Here they were, face
to face, in the deepest end of the little pool; they were only ten
feet apart and could not get more than twenty feet apart. The flames
grew unbearable. The Bear and man each took a hasty breath and bobbed
below the surface, each wondering, according to his intelligence, what
the other would do. In half a minute both came up again, each relieved
to find the other no nearer. Each tried to keep his nose and one eye
above the water. But the fire was raging hot; they had to dip under
and stay as long as possible.

The roaring of the flame was like a hurricane. A huge pine tree came
crashing down across the pool; it barely missed the man. The splash of
water quenched the blazes for the most part, but it gave off such a
heat that he had to move--a little nearer to the Bear. Another fell at
an angle, killing a coyote, and crossing the first tree. They blazed
fiercely at their junction, and the Bear edged from it a little nearer
the man. Now they were within touching distance. His useless gun was
lying in shallow water near shore, but the man had his knife ready,
ready for self-defense. It was not needed; the fiery power had
proclaimed a peace. Bobbing up and dodging under, keeping a nose in
the air and an eye on his foe, each spent an hour or more. The red
hurricane passed on. The smoke was bad in the woods, but no longer
intolerable, and as the Bear straightened up in the pool to move away
into shallower water and off into the woods, the man got a glimpse of
red blood streaming from the shaggy back and dyeing the pool. The
blood on the trail had not escaped him. He knew that this was the Bear
of Baxter's canon, this was the Gringo Bear, but he did not know that
this was also his old-time Grizzly Jack. He scrambled out of the pond,
on the other side from that taken by the Grizzly, and, hunter and
hunted, they went their diverse ways.



X. THE EDDY


All the west slopes of Tallac were swept by the fire, and Kellyan
moved to a new hut on the east side, where still were green patches;
so did the grouse and the rabbit and the coyote, and so did Grizzly
Jack. His wound healed quickly, but his memory of the rifle smell
continued; it was a dangerous smell, a new and horrible kind of
smoke--one he was destined to know too well; one, indeed, he was soon
to meet again. Jack was wandering down the side of Tallac, following a
sweet odor that called up memories of former joys--the smell of honey,
though he did not know it. A flock of grouse got leisurely out of his
way and flew to a low tree, when he caught a whiff of man smell, then
heard a crack like that which had stung him in the sheep-corral, and
down fell one of the grouse close beside him. He stepped forward to
sniff just as a man also stepped forward from the opposite bushes.
They were within ten feet of each other, and they recognized each
other, for the hunter saw that it was a singed Bear with a wounded
side, and the Bear smelt the rifle-smoke and the leather clothes.
Quick as a Grizzly--that is, quicker than a flash--the Bear reared.
The man sprang backward, tripped and fell, and the Grizzly was upon
him. Face to earth the hunter lay like dead, but, ere he struck, Jack
caught a scent that made him pause. He smelt his victim, and the smell
was the rolling back of curtains or the conjuring up of a past. The
days in the hunter's shanty were forgotten, but the feelings of those
days were ready to take command at the bidding of the nose. His nose
drank deep of a draft that quelled all rage. The Grizzly's humor
changed. He turned and left the hunter quite unharmed.

Oh, blind one with the gun! All he could find in explanation was: "You
kin never tell what a Grizzly will do, but it's good play to lay low
when he has you cornered." It never came into his mind to credit the
shaggy brute with an impulse born of good, and when he told the
sheep-herder of his adventure in the pool, of his hitting high on the
body and of losing the trail in the forest fire--"down by the shack,
when he turned up sudden and had me I thought my last day was come.
Why he didn't swat me, I don't know. But I tell you this, Pedro: the
B'ar what killed your sheep on the upper pasture and in the sheep
canon is the same. No two B'ars has hind feet alike when you get a
clear-cut track, and this holds out even right along."

"What about the fifty-foot B'ar I saw wit' mine own eyes, caramba?"

"That must have been the night you were working a kill-care with your
sheep-herder's delight. But don't worry; I'll get him yet."

So Kellyan set out on a long hunt, and put in practice every trick he
knew for the circumventing of a Bear. Lou Bonamy was invited to join
with him, for his yellow cur was a trailer. They packed four horses
with stuff and led them over the ridge to the east side of Tallac, and
down away from Jack's Peak, that Kellyan had named in honor of his
Bear cub, toward Fallen Leaf Lake. The hunter believed that here he
would meet not, only the Gringo Bear that he was after, but would also
stand a chance of finding others, for the place had escaped the fire.

They quickly camped, setting up their canvas sheet for shade more than
against rain, and after picketing their horses in a meadow, went out
to hunt. By circling around Leaf Lake they got a good idea of the wild
population: plenty of deer, some Black Bear, and one or two Cinnamon
and Grizzly, and one track along the shore that Kellyan pointed to,
briefly saying: "That's him."

"Ye mean old Pedro's Gringo?"

"Yep. That's the fifty-foot Grizzly. I suppose he stands maybe seven
foot high in daylight, but, 'course, B'ars pulls out long at night."

So the yellow cur was put on the track, and led away with funny little
yelps, while the two hunters came stumbling along behind him as fast
as they could, calling, at times, to the dog not to go so fast, and
thus making a good deal of noise, which Gringo Jack heard a mile away
as he ambled along the mountain-side above them. He was following his
nose to many good and eatable things, and therefore going up-wind.
This noise behind was so peculiar that he wanted to smell it, and to
do that he swung along back over the clamor, then descended to the
down-wind side, and thus he came on the trail of the hunters and their
dog.

His nose informed him at once. Here was the hunter he once felt kindly
toward and two other smells of far-back--both hateful; all three were
now the smell-marks of foes, and a rumbling "woof" was the expressive
sound that came from his throat.

That dog-smell in particular roused him, though it is very sure he had
forgotten all about the dog, and Gringo's feet went swiftly and
silently, yes, with marvelous silence, along the tracks of the enemy.

On rough, rocky ground a dog is scarcely quicker than a Bear, and
since the dog was constantly held back by the hunters the Bear had no
difficulty in overtaking them. Only a hundred yards or so behind he
continued, partly in curiosity, pursuing the dog that was pursuing
him, till a shift of the wind brought the dog a smell-call from the
Bear behind. He wheeled--of course you never follow trail smell when
you can find body smell--and came galloping back with a different
yapping and a bristling in his mane.

"Don't understand that," whispered Bonamy.

"It's B'ar, all right," was the answer; and the dog, bounding high,
went straight toward the foe.

Jack heard him coming, smelt him coming, and at length saw him coming;
but it was the smell that roused him--the full scent of the bully of
his youth. The anger of those days came on him, and cunning enough to
make him lurk in ambush: he backed to one side of the trail where it
passed under a root, and, as the little yellow tyrant came, Jack hit
him once, hit him as he had done some years before, but now with the
power of a grown Grizzly. No yelp escaped the dog, no second blow was
needed. The hunters searched in silence for half an hour before they
found the place and learned the tale from many silent tongues.

"I'll get even with him," muttered Bonamy, for he loved that
contemptible little yap-cur.

"That's Pedro's Gringo, all right. He's sure cunning to run his own
back track. But we'll fix him yet," and they vowed to kill that Bear
or "get done up" themselves.

Without a dog, they must make a new plan of hunting. They picked out
two or three good places for pen-traps, where trees stood in pairs to
make the pillars of the den. Then Kellyan returned to camp for the ax
while Bonamy prepared the ground.

As Kellyan came near their open camping-place, he stopped from habit
and peeped ahead for a minute. He was about to go down when a movement
caught his eye. There, on his haunches, sat a Grizzly, looking down on
the camp. The singed brown of his head and neck, and the white spot on
each side of his back, left no doubt that Kellyan and Pedro's Gringo
were again face to face. It was a long shot, but the rifle went up,
and as he was about to fire, the Bear suddenly bent his head down, and
lifting his hind paw, began to lick at a little cut. This brought the
head and chest nearly in line with Kellyan--a sure shot; so sure that
he fired hastily. He missed the head and the shoulder, but, strange to
say, he hit the Bear in the mouth and in the hind toe, carrying away
one of his teeth and the side of one toe. The Grizzly sprang up with a
snort, and came tearing down the hill toward the hunter. Kellyan
climbed a tree and got ready, but the camp lay just between them, and
the Bear charged on that instead. One sweep of his paw and the canvas
tent was down and torn. Whack! and tins went flying this way. Whisk!
and flour-sacks went that. Rip! and the flour went off like smoke.
Slap--crack! and a boxful of odds and ends was scattered into the
fire. Whack! and a bagful of cartridges was tumbled after it. Whang!
and the water-pail was crushed. Pat-pat-pat! and all the cups were in
useless bits.

Kellyan, safe up the tree, got no fair view to shoot--could only wait
till the storm-center cleared a little. The Bear chanced on a bottle
of something with a cork loosely in it. He seized it adroitly in his
paws, twisted out the cork, and held the bottle up to his mouth with a
comical dexterity that told of previous experience. But, whatever it
was, it did not please the invader; he spat and spilled it out, and
flung the bottle down as Kellyan gazed, astonished. A remarkable
"crack! crack! crack!" from the fire was heard now, and the cartridges
began to go off in ones, twos, fours, and numbers unknown. Gringo
whirled about; he had smashed everything in view. He did not like that
Fourth of July sound, so, springing to a bank, he went bumping and
heaving down to the meadow and had just stampeded the horses when, for
the first time, Gringo exposed himself to the hunter's aim. His flank
was grazed by another leaden stinger, and Gringo, wheeling, went off
into the woods.

The hunters were badly defeated. It was fully a week before they had
repaired all the damage done by their shaggy visitor and were once
more at Fallen Leaf Lake with a new store of ammunition and
provisions, their tent repaired, and their camp outfit complete. They
said little about their vow to kill that Bear. Both took for granted
that it was a fight to the finish. They never said, "_If_ we get him,"
but, "_When_ we get him."



XI. THE FORD


Gringo, savage, but still discreet, scaled the long mountain-side when
he left the ruined camp, and afar on the southern slope he sought a
quiet bed in a manzanita thicket, there to lie down and nurse his
wounds and ease his head so sorely aching with the jar of his
shattered tooth. There he lay for a day and a night, sometimes in
great pain, and at no time inclined to stir. But, driven forth by
hunger on the second day, he quit his couch and, making for the
nearest ridge, he followed that and searched the wind with his nose.
The smell of a mountain hunter reached him. Not knowing just what to
do he sat down and did nothing. The smell grew stronger, he heard
sounds of trampling; closer they came, then the brush parted and a man
on horseback appeared. The horse snorted and tried to wheel, but the
ridge was narrow and one false step might have been serious. The
cowboy held his horse in hand and, although he had a gun, he made no
attempt to shoot at the surly animal blinking at him and barring his
path. He was an old mountaineer, and he now used a trick that had long
been practised by the Indians, from whom, indeed, he learned it. He
began "making medicine with his voice."

"See here now, B'ar," he called aloud, "I ain't doing nothing to you.
I ain't got no grudge ag'in' you, an' you ain't got no right to a
grudge ag'in' me."

"Gro-o-o-h," said Gringo, deep and low.

"Now, I don't want no scrap with you, though I have my scrap-iron
right handy, an' what I want you to do is just step aside an' let me
pass that narrer trail an' go about my business."

"Grow--woo-oo-wow," grumbled Gringo.

"I'm honest about it, pard. You let me alone, and I'll let you alone;
all I want is right of way for five minutes."

"Grow-grow-wow-oo-umph," was the answer.

"Ye see, thar's no way round an' on'y one way through, an' you happen
to be settin' in it. I got to take it, for I can't turn back. Come,
now, is it a bargain--hands off and no scrap?"

It is very sure that Gringo could see in this nothing but a human
making queer, unmenacing, monotonous sounds, so giving a final
"Gr-u-ph," the Bear blinked his eyes, rose to his feet and strode down
the bank, and the cowboy forced his unwilling horse to and past the
place.

"Wall, wall," he chuckled, "I never knowed it to fail. Thar's whar
most B'ars is alike."

If Gringo had been able to think clearly, he might have said: "This
surely is a new kind of man."

[Illustration: "NOW, B'AR, I DON'T WANT NO SCRAP WITH YOU"]



XII. SWIRL AND POOL AND GROWING FLOOD


Gringo wandered on with nose alert, passing countless odors of
berries, roots, grouse, deer, till a new and pleasing smell came with
especial force. It was not sheep, or game, or a dead thing. It was a
smell of living meat. He followed the guide to a little meadow, and
there he found it. There were five of them, red, or red and
white--great things as big as himself; but he had no fear of them. The
hunter instinct came on him, and the hunter's audacity and love of
achievement. He sneaked toward them upwind in order that he might
still smell them, and it also kept them from smelling him. He reached
the edge of the wood. Here he must stop or be seen. There was a
watering-place close by. He silently drank, then lay down in a thicket
where he could watch. An hour passed thus. The sun went down and the
cattle arose to graze. One of them, a small one, wandered nearer,
then, acting suddenly with purpose, walked to the water-hole. Gringo
watched his chance, and as she floundered in the mud and stooped he
reared and struck with all his force. Square at her skull he aimed,
and the blow went straight. But Gringo knew nothing of horns. The
young, sharp horn, upcurling, hit his foot and was broken off; the
blow lost half its power. The beef went down, but Gringo had to follow
up the blow, then raged and tore in anger for his wounded paw. The
other cattle fled from the scene. The Grizzly took the heifer in his
jaws, then climbed the hill to his lair, and with this store of food
he again lay down to nurse his wounds. Though painful, they were not
serious, and within a week or so Grizzly Jack was as well as ever and
roaming the woods about Fallen Leaf Lake and farther south and east,
for he was extending his range as he grew--the king was coming to his
kingdom. In time he met others of his kind and matched his strength
with theirs. Sometimes he won and sometimes lost, but he kept on
growing as the months went by, growing and learning and adding to his
power.

Kellyan had kept track of him and knew at least the main facts of his
life, because he had one or two marks that always served to
distinguish him. A study of the tracks had told of the round wound in
the front foot and the wound in the hind foot. But there was another:
the hunter had picked up the splinters of bone at the camp where he
had fired at the Bear, and, after long doubt, he guessed that he had
broken a tusk. He hesitated to tell the story of hitting a tooth and
hind toe at the same shot till, later, he had clearer proof of its
truth.

No two animals are alike. Kinds which herd have more sameness than
those that do not, and the Grizzly, being a solitary kind, shows great
individuality. Most Grizzlies mark their length on the trees by
rubbing their backs, and some will turn on the tree and claw it with
their fore paws; others hug the tree with fore paws and rake it with
their hind claws. Gringo's peculiarity of marking was to rub first,
then turn and tear the trunk with his teeth.

It was on examining one of the Bear trees one day that Kellyan
discovered the facts. He had been tracking the Bear all morning, had a
fine set of tracks in the dusty trail, and thus learned that the
rifle-wound was a toe-shot in the hind foot, but his fore foot of the
same side had a large round wound, the one really made by the cow's
horn. When he came to the Bear tree where Gringo had carved his
initials, the marks were clearly made by the Bear's teeth, and one of
the upper tusks was broken off, so the evidence of identity was
complete.

"It's the same old B'ar," said Lan to his pard.

They failed to get sight of him in all this time, so the partners set
to work at a series of Bear-traps. These are made of heavy logs and
have a sliding door of hewn planks. The bait is on a trigger at the
far end; a tug on this lets the door drop. It was a week's hard work
to make four of these traps. They did not set them at once, for no
Bear will go near a thing so suspiciously new-looking. Some Bears will
not approach one till it is weather-beaten and gray. But they removed
all chips and covered the newly cut wood with mud, then rubbed the
inside with stale meat, and hung a lump of ancient venison on the
trigger of each trap.

They did not go around for three days, knowing that the human smell
must first be dissipated, and then they found but one trap sprung--the
door down. Bonamy became greatly excited, for they had crossed the
Grizzly's track close by. But Kellyan had been studying the dust and
suddenly laughed aloud.

"Look at that,"--he pointed to a thing like a Bear-track, but scarcely
two inches long. "There's the B'ar we'll find in that; that's a
bushy-tailed B'ar," and Bonamy joined in the laugh when he realized
that the victim in the big trap was nothing but a little skunk.

"Next time we'll set the bait higher and not set the trigger so fine."

They rubbed their boots with stale meat when they went the rounds,
then left the traps for a week.

There are Bears that eat little but roots and berries; there are Bears
that love best the great black salmon they can hook out of the pools
when the long "run" is on; and there are Bears that have a special
fondness for flesh. These are rare; they are apt to develop unusual
ferocity and meet an early death. Gringo was one of them, and he grew
like the brawny, meat-fed gladiators of old--bigger, stronger, and
fiercer than his fruit-and root-fed kin. In contrast with this was his
love of honey. The hunter on his trail learned that he never failed to
dig out any bees' nest he could find, or, finding none, he would eat
the little honey-flowers that hung like sleigh-bells on the heather.
Kellyan was quick to mark the signs. "Say, Bonamy, we've got to find
some honey."

It is not easy to find a bee tree without honey to fill your
bee-guides; so Bonamy rode down the mountain to the nearest camp, the
Tampico sheep camp, and got not honey but some sugar, of which they
made syrup. They caught bees at three or four different places, tagged
them with cotton, filled them with syrup and let them fly, watching
till the cotton tufts were lost to view, and by going on the lines
till they met they found the hive. A piece of gunny-sack filled with
comb was put on each trigger, and that night, as Gringo strode with
that long, untiring swing that eats up miles like steam-wheels, his
sentinel nose reported the delicious smell, the one that above the
rest meant joy. So Gringo Jack followed fast and far, for the place
was a mile away, and reaching the curious log cavern, he halted and
sniffed. There were hunters' smells; yes, but, above all, that smell
of joy. He walked around to be sure, and knew it was inside; then
cautiously he entered. Some wood-mice scurried by. He sniffed the
bait, licked it, mumbled it, slobbered it, reveled in it, tugged to
increase the flow, when "bang!" went the great door behind and Jack was
caught. He backed up with a rush, bumped into the door, and had a
sense, at least, of peril. He turned over with an effort and attacked
the door, but it was strong. He examined the pen; went all around the
logs where their rounded sides seemed easiest to tear at with his
teeth. But they yielded nothing. He tried them all; he tore at the
roof, the floor; but all were heavy, hard logs, spiked and pinned as
one.

The sun came up as he raged, and shone through the little cracks of
the door, and so he turned all his power on that. The door was flat,
gave little hold, but he battered with his paws and tore with his
teeth till plank after plank gave way. With a final crash be drove the
wreck before him and Jack was free again.

The men read the story as though in print; yes, better, for bits of
plank can tell no lies, and the track to the pen and from the pen was
the track of a big Bear with a cut on the hind foot and a curious
round peg-like scar on the front paw, while the logs inside, where
little torn, gave proof of a broken tooth.

"We had him that time, but he knew too much for us. Never mind, we'll
see."

So they kept on and caught him again, for honey he could not resist.
But the wreckage of the trap was all they found in the morning.

Pedro's brother knew a man who had trapped Bears, and the sheep-herder
remembered that it is necessary to have the door quite _light-tight_
rather than very strong, so they battened all with tar-paper outside.
But Gringo was learning "pen-traps." He did not break the door that he
did not see through, but he put one paw under and heaved it up when he
had finished the bait. Thus he baffled them and sported with the
traps, till Kellyan made the door drop into a deep groove so that the
Bear could put no claw beneath it. But it was cold weather now. There
was deepening snow on the Sierras. The Bear sign disappeared. The
hunters knew that Gringo was sleeping his winter's sleep.



XIII. THE DEEPENING CHANNEL


April was bidding high Sierra snows go back to Mother Sea. The
California woodwales screamed in clamorous joy. They thought it was
about a few acorns left in storage in the Live Oak bark, but it really
was joy of being alive. This outcry was to them what music is to the
thrush, what joy-bells are to us--a great noise to tell how glad they
were. The deer were bounding, grouse were booming, rills were
rushing--all things were full of noisy gladness.

Kellyan and Bonamy were back on the Grizzly quest. "Time he was out
again, and good trailing to get him, with lots of snow in the
hollows." They had come prepared for a long hunt. Honey for bait,
great steel traps with crocodilian jaws, and guns there were in the
outfit. The pen-trap, the better for the aging, was repaired and
re-baited, and several Black Bears were taken. But Gringo, if about,
had learned to shun it.

He was about, and the men soon learned that. His winter sleep was
over. They found the peg-print in the snow, but with it, or just
ahead, was another, the tracks of a smaller Bear.

"See that," and Kellyan pointed to the smaller mark. "This is
mating-time; this is Gringo's honeymoon," and he followed the trail
for a while, not expecting to find them, but simply to know their
movements. He followed several times and for miles, and the trail told
him many things. Here was the track of a third Bear joining. Here were
marks of a combat, and a rival driven away was written there, and then
the pair went on. Down from the rugged hills it took him once to where
a love-feast had been set by the bigger Bear; for the carcass of a
steer lay half devoured, and the telltale ground said much of the
struggle that foreran the feast. As though to show his power, the Bear
had seized the steer by the nose and held him for a while--so said the
trampled earth for rods--struggling, bellowing, no doubt, music for my
lady's ears, till Gringo judged it time to strike him down with paws
of steel.

Once only the hunters saw the pair--a momentary Glimpse of a Bear so
huge they half believed Tampico's tale, and a Bear of lesser size in
fur that rolled and rippled in the sun with brown and silver lights.

"Oh, ain't that just the beautifulest thing that ever walked!" and
both the hunters gazed as she strode from view in the chaparral. It
was only a neck of the thicket; they both must reappear in a minute at
the other side, and the men prepared to fire; but for some
incomprehensible reason the two did not appear again. They never quit
the cover, and had wandered far away before the hunters knew it, and
were seen of them no more.

But Faco Tampico saw them. He was visiting his brother with the sheep,
and hunting in the foot-hills to the eastward, in hopes of getting a
deer, his small black eyes fell on a pair of Bears, still love-bound,
roaming in the woods. They were far below him. He was safe, and he
sent a ball that laid the she-Bear low; her back was broken. She fell
with a cry of pain and vainly tried to rise. Then Gringo rushed
around, sniffed the wind for the foe, and Faco fired again. The sound
and the smoke-puff told Gringo where the man lay hid. He raged up the
cliff, but Faco climbed a tree, and Gringo went back to his mate. Faco
fired again; Gringo made still another effort to reach him, but could
not find him now, so returned to his "Silver-brown."

Whether it was chance or choice can never be known, but when Faco
fired once more, Gringo Jack was between, and the ball struck him. It
was the last in Faco's pouch, and the Grizzly, charging as before,
found not a trace of the foe. He was gone--had swung across a place no
Bear could cross and soon was a mile away. The big Bear limped back to
his mate, but she no longer responded to his touch. He watched about
for a time, but no one came. The silvery hide was never touched by
man, and when the semblance of his mate was gone, Gringo quit the
place.

The world was full of hunters, traps, and guns. He turned toward the
lower hills where the sheep grazed, where once he had raided Pedro's
flocks, limping along, for now he had another flesh-wound. He found
the scent of the foe that killed his "Silver-brown," and would have
followed, but it ceased at a place where a horse-track joined. Yet he
found it again that night, mixed with the sheep smell so familiar
once. He followed this, sore and savage. It led him to a settler's
flimsy shack, the house of Tampico's parents, and as the big Bear
reached it two human beings scrambled out of the rear door.

"My husband," shrieked the woman, "pray! Let us pray to the saints for
help!"

"Where is my pistol?" cried the husband.

"Trust in the saints," said the frightened woman.

"Yes, if I had a cannon, or if this was a cat; but with only a
pepper-box pistol to meet a Bear mountain it is better to trust to a
tree," and old Tampico scrambled up a pine.

The Grizzly looked into the shack, then passed to the pig-pen, killed
the largest there, for this was a new kind of meat, and carrying it
off, he made his evening meal.

He came again and again to that pig-pen. He found his food there till
his wound was healed. Once he met with a spring-gun, but it was set
too high. Six feet up, the sheep-folk judged, would be just about
right for such a Bear; the charge went over his head, and so he passed
unharmed--a clear proof that he was a devil. He was learning this: the
human smell in any form is a smell of danger. He quit the little
valley of the shack, wandering downward toward the plains. He passed a
house one night, and walking up, he discovered a hollow thing with a
delicious smell. It was a ten-gallon keg that had been used for sugar,
some of which was still in the bottom, and thrusting in his huge head,
the keg-rim, bristling with nails, stuck to him. He raged about,
clawing at it wildly and roaring in it until a charge of shot from the
upper windows stirred him to such effort that the keg was smashed to
bits and his blinders removed.

Thus the idea was slowly borne in on him: going near a man-den is sure
to bring trouble. Thenceforth he sought his prey in the woods or on
the plains. He one day found the man scent that enraged him the day he
lost his "Silver-brown." He took the trail, and passing in silence
incredible for such a bulk, he threaded chaparral and manzanita on and
down through tule-beds till the level plain was reached. The scent led
on, was fresher now. Far out were white specks--moving things. They
meant nothing to Gringo, for he had never smelt wild geese, had
scarcely seen them, but the trail he was hunting went on. He swiftly
followed till the tule ahead rustled gently, and the scent was _body
scent_. A ponderous rush, a single blow--and the goose-hunt was
ended ere well begun, and Faco's sheep became the brother's heritage.



XIV. THE CATARACT


Just as fads will for a time sway human life, so crazes may run
through all animals of a given kind. This was the year when a
beef-eating craze seemed to possess every able-bodied Grizzly of the
Sierras. They had long been known as a root-eating, berry-picking,
inoffensive race when let alone, but now they seemed to descend on the
cattle-range in a body and make their diet wholly of flesh.

One cattle outfit after another was attacked, and the whole country
seemed divided up among Bears of incredible size, cunning, and
destructiveness. The cattlemen offered bounties--good bounties,
growing bounties, very large bounties at last--but still the Bears
kept on. Very few were killed, and it became a kind of rude jest to
call each section of the range, not by the cattle brand, but by the
Grizzly that was quartered on its stock.

Wonderful tales were told of these various Bears of the new breed. The
swiftest was Reelfoot, the Placerville cattle-killer that could charge
from a thicket thirty yards away and certainly catch a steer before it
could turn and run, and that could even catch ponies in the open when
they were poor. The most cunning of all was Brin, the Mokelumne
Grizzly that killed by preference blooded stock, would pick out a
Merino ram or a white-faced Hereford from among fifty grades; that
killed a new beef every night; that never again returned to it, or
gave the chance for traps or poisoning.

The Pegtrack Grizzly of Feather River was rarely seen by any. He was
enveloped in mysterious terror. He moved and killed by night. Pigs
were his favorite food, and he had also killed a number of men.

But Pedro's Grizzly was the most marvelous. "Hassayampa," as the
sheep-herder was dubbed, came one night to Kellyan's hut.

"I tell you he's still dere. He has keel me a t'ousand sheep. You
telled me you keel heem; you haff not. He is beegare as dat tree. He
eat only sheep--much sheep. I tell you he ees Gringo devil--he ees
devil Bear. I haff three cows, two fat, one theen. He catch and keel
de fat; de lean run off. He roll een dust--make great dust. Cow come
for see what make dust; he catch her an' keel. My fader got bees. De
devil Bear chaw pine; I know he by hees broke toof. He gum hees face
and nose wit' pine gum so bees no sting, then eat all bees. He devil
all time. He get much rotten manzanita and eat till drunk--locoed--then
go crazy and keel sheep just for fun. He get beeg bull by nose and
drag like rat for fun. He keel cow, sheep, and keel Face, too, for
fun. He devil. You promise me you keel heem; you nevaire keel."

This is a condensation of Pedro's excited account.

And there was yet one more--the big Bear that owned the range from the
Stanislaus to the Merced, the "Monarch of the Range" he had been
styled. He was believed--yes, known to be--the biggest Bear alive, a
creature of supernatural intelligence. He killed cows for food, and
scattered sheep or conquered bulls for pleasure. It was even said that
the appearance of an unusually big bull anywhere was a guaranty that
Monarch would be there for the joy of combat with a worthy foe. A
destroyer of cattle, sheep, pigs, and horses, and yet a creature known
only by his track. He was never seen, and his nightly raids seemed
planned with consummate skill to avoid all kinds of snares.

The cattlemen clubbed together and offered an enormous bounty for
every Grizzly killed in the range. Bear-trappers came and caught some
Bears, Brown and Cinnamon, but the cattle-killing went on. They set
out better traps of massive steel and iron bars, and at length they
caught a killer, the Mokelumne Grizzly; yes, and read in the dust how
he had come at last and made the fateful step; but steel will break
and iron will bend. The great Bear-trail was there to tell the tale:
for a while he had raged and chafed at the hard black reptile biting
into his paw; then, seeking a boulder, he had released the paw by
smashing the trap to pieces on it. Thenceforth each year he grew more
cunning, huge, and destructive.

Kellyan and Bonamy came down from the mountains now, tempted by the
offered rewards. They saw the huge tracks; they learned that cattle
were not killed in all places at once. They studied and hunted. They
got at length in the dust the full impressions of the feet of the
various monsters in regions wide apart, and they saw that all the
cattle were killed in the same way--their muzzles torn, their necks
broken; and last, the marks on the trees where the Bears had reared
and rubbed, then scored them with a broken tusk, the same all through
the wide range; and Kellyan told them with calm certainty: "Pedro's
Gringo, Old Pegtrack, the Placerville Grizzly, and the Monarch of the
Range _are one and the same Bear."_

The little man from the mountains and the big man from the hills set
about the task of hunting him down with an intensity of purpose which,
like the river that is dammed, grew more fierce from being balked.

All manner of traps had failed for him. Steel traps he could smash, no
log trap was strong enough to hold this furry elephant; he would not
come to a bait; he never fed twice from the same kill.

Two reckless boys once trailed him to a rocky glen. The horses would
not enter; the boys went in afoot, and were never seen again. The
Mexicans held him in superstitious terror, believing that he could not
be killed; and he passed another year in the cattle-land, known and
feared now as the "Monarch of the Range," killing in the open by
night, and retiring by day to his fastness in the near hills, where
horsemen could not follow.

Bonamy had been called away; but all that summer, and winter,
too,--for the Grizzly no longer "denned up,"--Kellyan rode and rode,
each time too late or too soon to meet the Monarch. He was almost
giving up, not in despair, but for lack of means, when a message came
from a rich man, a city journalist, offering to multiply the reward by
ten if, instead of killing the Monarch, he would bring him in alive.

Kellyan sent for his old partner, and when word came that the previous
night three cows were killed in the familiar way near the Bell-Dash
pasture, they spared neither horse nor man to reach the spot. A
ten-hour ride by night meant worn-out horses, but the men were iron,
and new horses with scarcely a minute's delay were brought them. Here
were the newly killed beeves, there the mighty footprints with the
scars that spelled his name. No hound could have tracked him better
than Kellyan did. Five miles away from the foot of the hills was an
impenetrable thicket of chaparral. The great tracks went in, did not
come out, so Bonamy sat sentinel while Kellyan rode back with the
news. "Saddle up the best we got!" was the order. Rifles were taken
down and cartridge-belts being swung when Kellyan called a halt.

"Say, boys, we've got him safe enough. He won't try to leave the
chaparral till night. If we shoot him we get the cattlemen's bounty;
if we take him alive--an' it's easy in the open--we get the newspaper
bounty, ten times as big. Let's leave all guns behind; lariats are
enough."

"Why not have the guns along to be handy?"

"'Cause I know the crowd too well; they couldn't resist the chance to
let him have it; so no guns at all. It's ten to one on the riata."

Nevertheless three of them brought their heavy revolvers. Seven
gallant riders on seven fine horses, they rode out that day to meet
the Monarch of the Range. He was still in the thicket, for it was yet
morning. They threw stones in and shouted to drive him out, without
effect, till the noon breeze of the plains arose--the down-current of
air from the hills. Then they fired the grass in several places, and
it sent a rolling sheet of flame and smoke into the thicket. There was
a crackling louder than the fire, a smashing of brush, and from the
farther side out hurled the Monarch Bear, the Gringo, Grizzly Jack.
Horsemen were all about him now, armed not with guns but with the
rawhide snakes whose loops in air spell bonds or death. The men were
calm, but the horses were snorting and plunging in fear. This way and
that the Grizzly looked up at the horsemen--a little bit; scarcely up
at the horses; then turning without haste, he strode toward the
friendly hills.

"Look out, now, Bill! Manuel! It's up to you."

Oh, noble horses, nervy men! oh, grand old Grizzly, how I see you now!
Cattle-keepers and cattle-killer face to face!

Three riders of the range that horse had never thrown were sailing,
swooping, like falcons; their lariats swung, sang--sang higher--and
Monarch, much perplexed, but scarcely angered yet, rose to his hind
legs, then from his towering height looked down on horse and man. If,
as they say, the vanquished prowess goes into the victor, then surely
in that mighty chest, those arms like necks of bulls, was the power of
the thousand cattle he had downed in fight.

"Caramba! what a Bear! Pedro was not so far astray."

"Sing--sing--sing!" the lariats flew. "Swish--pat!" one, two, three,
they fell. These were not men to miss. Three ropes, three horses,
leaping away to bear on the great beast's neck. But swifter than
thought the supple paws went up. The ropes were slipped, and the
spurred cow-ponies, ready for the shock, went, shockless,
bounding--loose ropes trailing afar.

"Hi--Hal! Ho--Lan! Head him!" as the Grizzly, liking not the unequal
fight, made for the hills. But a deft Mexican in silver gear sent his
hide riata whistling, then haunched his horse as the certain coil sank
in the Grizzly's hock, and checked the Monarch with a heavy jar.
Uttering one great snort of rage, he turned; his huge jaws crossed the
rope, back nearly to his ears it went, and he ground it as a dog might
grind a twig, so the straining pony bounded free.

Round and round him now the riders swooped, waiting their chance. More
than once his neck was caught, but he slipped the noose as though it
were all play. Again he was caught by a foot and wrenched, almost
thrown, by the weight of two strong steeds, and now he foamed in rage.
Memories of olden days, or more likely the habit of olden days, came
on him--days when he learned to strike the yelping pack that dodged
his blows. He was far from the burnt thicket, but a single bush was
near, and setting his broad back to that, he waited for the circling
foe. Nearer and nearer they urged the frightened steeds, and Monarch
watched--waited, as of old, for the dogs, till they were almost
touching each other, then he sprang like an avalanche of rock. What
can elude a Grizzly's dash? The earth shivered as he launched himself,
and trembled when he struck. Three men, three horses, in each other's
way. The dust was thick; they only knew he struck--struck--struck! The
horses never rose.

"Santa Maria!" came a cry of death, and hovering riders dashed to draw
the Bear away. Three horses dead, one man dead, one nearly so, and
only one escaped.

"Crack! crack! crack!" went the pistols now as the Bear went rocking
his huge form in rapid charge for the friendly hills; and the four
riders, urged by Kellyan, followed fast. They passed him, wheeled,
faced him. The pistols had wounded him in many places.

"Don't shoot--don't shoot, but tire him out," the hunter urged.

"Tire him out? Look at Carlos and Manuel back there. How many minutes
will it be before the rest are down with them?" So the infuriating
pistols popped till all their shots were gone, and Monarch foamed with
slobbering jaws of rage.

"Keep on! keep cool," cried Kellyan.

His lariat flew as the cattle-killing paw was lifted for an instant.
The lasso bound his wrist. "Sing! Sing!" went two, and caught him by
the neck. A bull with his great club-foot in a noose is surely caught,
but the Grizzly raised his supple, hand-like, tapering paw and gave
one jerk that freed it. Now the two on his neck were tight; he could
not slip them. The horses at the ends--they were dragging, choking
him; men were shouting, hovering, watching for a new chance, when
Monarch, firmly planting both paws, braced, bent those mighty
shoulders, and, spite of shortening breath, leaned back on those two
ropes as Samson did on pillars of the house of Baal, and straining
horses with their riders were dragged forward more and more, long
grooves being plowed behind; dragging them, he backed faster and
faster still. His eyes were starting, his tongue lolling out.

"Keep on! hold tight!" was the cry, till the ropers swung together,
the better to resist; and Monarch, big and strong with frenzied hate,
seeing now his turn, sprang forward like a shot. The horses leaped and
escaped--almost; the last was one small inch too slow. The awful paw
with jags of steel just grazed his flank. How slight it sounds! But
what it really means is better not writ down.

The riders had slipped their ropes in fear, and the Monarch, rumbling,
snorting, bounding, trailed them to the hills, there to bite them off
in peace, while the remnant of the gallant crew went, sadly muttering,
back.

Bitter words went round. Kellyan was cursed.

"His fault. Why didn't we have the guns?"

"We were all in it," was the answer, and more hard words, till Kellyan
flushed, forgot his calm, and drew a pistol hitherto concealed, and
the other "took it back."

[Illustration: "RUMBLING AND SNORTING, HE MADE FOR THE FRIENDLY
HILLS"]



XV. THE FOAMING FLOOD


"What is next, Lan?" said Lou, as they sat dispirited by the fire that
night.

Kellyan was silent for a time, then said slowly and earnestly, with a
gleam in his eye: "Lou, that's the greatest Bear alive. When I seen
him set up there like a butte and swat horses like they was flies, I
jest loved him. He's the greatest thing God has turned loose in these
yer hills. Before to-day, I sure wanted to get him; now, Lou, I'm
a-going to get him, an' get him alive, if it takes all my natural
days. I think I kin do it alone, but I know I kin do it with you," and
deep in Kellyan's eyes there glowed a little spark of something not
yet rightly named.

They were camped in the hills, being no longer welcome at the ranch;
the ranchers thought their price too high. Some even decided that the
Monarch, being a terror to sheep, was not an undesirable neighbor. The
cattle bounty was withdrawn, but the newspaper bounty was not.

"I want you to bring in that Bear," was the brief but pregnant message
from the rich newsman when he heard of the fight with the riders.

"How are you going about it, Lan?"

Every bridge has its rotten plank, every fence its flimsy rail, every
great one his weakness, and Kellyan, as he pondered, knew how mad it
was to meet this one of brawn with mere brute force.

"Steel traps are no good; he smashes them. Lariats won't do, and he
knows all about log traps. But I have a scheme. First, we must follow
him up and learn his range. I reckon that'll take three months."

So the two kept on. They took up that Bear-trail next day; they found
the lariats chewed off. They followed day after day. They learned what
they could from rancher and sheepherder, and much more was told them
than they could believe.

Three months, Lan said, but it took six months to carry out his plan;
meanwhile Monarch killed and killed.

In each section of his range they made one or two cage- or pen-traps
of bolted logs. At the back end of each they put a small grating of
heavy steel bars. The door was carefully made and fitted into grooves.
It was of double plank, with tar-paper between to make it surely
light-tight. It was sheeted with iron on the inside, and when it
dropped it went into an iron-bound groove in the floor.

They left these traps open and unset till they were grayed with age
and smelt no more of man. Then the two hunters prepared for the final
play. They baited all without setting them--baited them with honey,
the lure that Monarch never had refused--and when at length they found
the honey baits were gone, they came where he now was taking toll and
laid the long-planned snare. Every trap was set, and baited as before
with a mass of honey--but _honey now mixed with a potent sleeping
draft_.