dat are now starving up on de rocks of de canon of Baxstaire's."
The Mexican's eyes twinkled as the white man closed on the offer. The
gold in the bottle, ten or fifteen dollars, was a trifle, and yet
enough to send the hunter on the quest--enough to lure him into the
enterprise, and that was all that was needed. Pedro knew his man: get
him going and profit would count for nothing; having put his hand to
the plow Lan Kellyan would finish the furrow at any cost; he was
incapable of turning back. And again he took up the trail of Grizzly
Jack, his one-time "pard," now grown beyond his ken.
The hunter went straight to Baxter's canon and found the sheep
high-perched upon the rocks. By the entrance he found the remains of
two of them recently devoured, and about them the tracks of a
medium-sized Bear. He saw nothing of the pathway--the dead-line--made
by the Grizzly to keep the sheep prisoners till he should need them.
But the sheep were standing in stupid terror on various high places,
apparently willing to starve rather than come down. Lan dragged one
down; at once it climbed up again. He now realized the situation, so
made a small pen of chaparral outside the canon, and dragging the dull
creatures down one at a time, he carried them--except one--out of the
prison of death and into the pen. Next he made a hasty fence across
the canon's mouth, and turning the sheep out of the pen, he drove them
by slow stages toward the rest of the flock.
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.