IN THE CANYON
Ruth wheeled her mount the next moment and headed it again in the right
direction. She saw at last what had caused her two companions such
wonder.
In a deep hole near the edge of the morass was a huge Hereford bull.
Most of the cattle in that country were Herefords.
The animal had without doubt become foundered in the swamp hole; but
that was by no means the worst that had happened to him. While held more
than belly-deep in the sticky mud he had been attacked by the only kind
of bear in all the Rockies that, unless under great provocation, attacks
anything bigger than woodmice.
A big black bear had flung itself upon the back of the bellowing,
struggling bull and was tearing and biting the poor creature's head and
neck--actually eating the bull by piecemeal!
"Oh, horrors!" gasped Helen, sickened by the sight of the blood and the
ferocity of the bear. "Is that a dreadful grizzly? How terrible!"
"It's eating the poor bull alive!" Jennie cried.
Ruth had never ridden out from camp since Dakota Joe's last appearance
without carrying a light rifle in her saddle scabbard. She rode a
regular stockman's saddle and liked the ease and comfort of it.
Now she seized her weapon and cocked It.
"That is not a grizzly, girls!" she exclaimed. "The grizzly is
ordinarily a tame animal beside this fellow. The blackbear is the
meat-eater--and the man-killer, too. I learned all about that in our
first trip out here to the West."
"Quick! Do something for that poor steer!" begged Helen. "Never mind
lecturing about it."
But Ruth had been wasting no time while she talked. She first had to get
her pony to stand She knew it was not gun-shy. It was only the scent and
sight of the bear that excited it.
Once the pony's four feet were firmly set, the girl of the Red Mill, who
was no bad shot, raised her rifle and sighted down the barrel at the
little snarling eyes of Bruin behind his open, red jaws. The bear
crouched on the bull's back and actually roared at the girls who had
come to disturb him at his savage feast.
Ruth's trigger-finger was firm. It was an automatic rifle, and although
it fired a small ball, the girl had drawn a good bead on the bear's
most vulnerable point--the base of his wicked brain! The several bullets
poured into that spot, severing the vertebrae and almost, indeed,
tearing the head from the brute's shoulders!
"Oh, Ruth! You've done for him!" cried Helen, with delight.
"But the poor bull!" murmured Jennie. "See! He can't get out. He's done
for."
"I am afraid they are both done for," returned Ruth. "Take this gun,
Jennie. Let me see if I can rope the bull and help him out."
She swung the puncher's lariat she carried hung from her saddle-bow with
much expertness. She had practised lariat throwing on her previous trips
to the West. But although she was able to encircle the bull's bleeding
head with the noose of the rope, to drag the creature out of the morass
was impossible.
He was sunk in the mire too deeply, and he was too far gone now to help
himself. The bear had rolled off the back of the bull and after a few
faint struggles ceased to live. But Bruin's presence made it very
difficult for the girls to force their ponies closer to the dying bull.
Therefore, after all, Ruth had to abandon her lariat, tying the end of
it to a tree and by this means keeping the bull from sinking out of
sight after she had put a merciful bullet into him.
As they rode near the Hubbell Ranch they stopped and told of their
adventure at the swamp, and a party of the boys rode out and saved both
bear and bull meat from the coyotes or from cougars that sometimes came
down from the hills.
The three girls had not been idly riding about the country during these
several days which had been punctuated, as it were, with the adventure
of the bull and the bear. That very day they had found the canyon which
Mr. Hammond and the director had been hoping to find and use in filming
some of the most thrilling scenes of "Brighteyes."
As Ruth was the writer of the scenario it was natural that she should be
quite capable of choosing the location. The lovely and sheltered canyon
offered all that was needed for the taking of the scenes indicated.
The girls went back the next day, taking Mr. Hammond with them. This
time they merely glanced at the spot where the bear and the bull had
died, and they did not visit the family of nesters at all. The shadowy
mouth of the canyon, its sides running up steeply into the hills, was
long in sight before the little cavalcade reached it.
From the mouth of it Mr. Hammond could not judge if Ruth's selection of
locality was a wise one. Certain natural attributes were necessary to
fit the needs of the story she had written. When, after they had ridden
a couple of miles up the canyon, he saw the cliff path and the lip of
the overhanging rock on which the hero of the story and _Brighteyes_'
Indian lover were to struggle, he proclaimed himself satisfied.
"You've got it, I do believe," the producer declared. "This will delight
Jim Hooley, I am sure. We can stake out a net down here under that rock
so if either or both the boys fall, they will land all right. It will be
some stunt picture, and no mistake!"
He wanted to look around the place, however, before riding back, and the
girls dismounted too. The bottom of the canyon was a smooth lawn--the
grass still green. For although the tang of winter was now in the air
even at noon, the weather had been remarkably pleasant. Only on the
distant heights had the snow fallen, and not much there.
There was a silvery stream wandering through the meadow over which the
girls walked. By one pool was a shallow bit of beach, and Ruth, coming
upon this alone, suddenly cried out:
"Oh, Helen! Jennie! I am a Miss Crusoe. Come here and see the
unmistakable mark of my Man Friday."
"What do you mean, you ridiculous thing?" drawled Jennie. "You cannot be
a Crusoe. You are not dressed in skins."
"Well, I like that!" rejoined Ruth, raising her eyebrows in apparent
surprise, "I should think I was covered with skin. Why not? Am I
different from the remainder of humanity?"
Of course they laughed with her as they came to view her discovery upon
the sand. It was the mark of a human foot.
"And no savage, I'll be bound," said Helen. "That is the mark of a
mighty brogan. A white man's foot-covering, no less. See! There is
another footprint."
"He certainly was going away from here," Jennie Stone observed. "Who do
you suppose he is?"
"I wonder if his eyes are blue and if he has a moustache?" queried
Helen, languishingly.
"Bet he has whiskers and chews tobacco. I known these Western men. Bah!"
"Jennie takes all the romance out of it," said Ruth, laughing. "Now I
don't care to meet my Man Friday at all."
They ate a picnic lunch before they rode out of the lovely canyon. Mr.
Hammond was always good company, and he exerted himself to be
interesting to the three girls on this occasion.
"My!" Helen remarked to Jennie, "Ruth does make the nicest friends,
doesn't she? See how much fun--how many good times--we have had through
her acquaintanceship with Mr. Hammond."
Jennie agreed. But her attention was attracted just then to something
entirely different. She was staring up the cliff path that Mr. Hammond
had praised as being just the natural landmark needed for the scene the
company wished to picture.
"Did you see what I saw?" drawled the plump girl. "Or am I thinking too,
too much about mankind?"
"What is the matter with you?" demanded Helen. "I didn't see any man."
"Not up that rocky way--there! A brown coat and a gray hat. Did you
see?"
"Ruth's Man Friday!" ejaculated Helen.
"I shouldn't wonder. But we can't prove it because we haven't the size
of yonder gentleman's boot. Humph I he is running away from us, all
right."
"Maybe he never saw us," suggested Helen.
They called to Ruth and told her of the glimpse they had had of the
stranger.
"And what did he run away for, do you suppose?" demanded Jennie.
"I am sure you need not ask me," said Ruth. "What did he look like?"
"I did not see his face," said Jennie. She repeated what she had
already said to Helen about the stranger's gray hat and brown coat.
Ruth looked somewhat troubled and made no further comment Of course, the
coat and hat were probably like the coat and hat of numberless other men
in the West. But the last time Ruth had seen Dakota Joe Fenbrook, that
individual had been wearing a broad-brimmed gray sombrero and a brown
duck coat.