Part 2 (2/2)

When he looked up the giant Bear was gone. There was a rus.h.i.+ng of the sheep. A small body of them scurried out of the canon into the night, and after them went an ordinary-sized Bear, undoubtedly a cub of the monster.

Pedro had been neglecting his prayers for some months back, but he afterward a.s.sured his father confessor that on this night he caught up on all arrears and had a goodly surplus before morning. At sunrise he left his dog in charge of the flock and set out to seek the runaways, knowing, first, that there was little danger in the day-time, second, that some would escape. The missing ones were a considerable number, raised to the second power indeed, for two more black ones were gone.

Strange to tell, they had not scattered, and Pedro trailed them a mile or more in the wilderness till he reached another very small box canon. Here he found the missing flock perched in various places on boulders and rocky pinnacles as high up as they could get. He was delighted and worked for half a minute on his bank surplus of prayers, but was sadly upset to find that nothing would induce the sheep to come down from the rocks or leave that canon. One or two that he manoeuvered as far as the outlet sprang back in fear from _something on the ground_, which, on examination, he found--yes, he swears to this--to be the deep-worn, fresh-worn pathway of a Grizzly from one wall across to the other. All the sheep were now back again beyond his reach. Pedro began to fear for himself, so hastily returned to the main flock. He was worse off than ever now. The other Grizzly was a Bear of ordinary size and ate a sheep each night, but the new one, into whose range he had entered, was a monster, a Bear mountain, requiring forty or fifty sheep to a meal. The sooner he was out of this the better.

It was now late, too late, and the sheep were too tired to travel, so Pedro made unusual preparations for the night: two big fires at the entrance to the canon, and a platform fifteen feet up in a tree for his own bed. The dog could look out for himself.

VIII. ROARING IN THE CANON

Pedro knew that the big Bear was coming; for the fifty sheep in the little canon were not more than an appetizer for such a creature. He loaded his gun carefully as a matter of habit and went up-stairs to bed. Whatever defects his dormitory had the ventilation was good, and Pedro was soon a-s.h.i.+ver. He looked down in envy at his dog curled up by the fire; then he prayed that the saints might intervene and direct the steps of the Bear toward the flock of some neighbor, and carefully specified the neighbor to avoid mistakes. He tried to pray himself to sleep. It had never failed in church when he was at the Mission, so why now? But for once it did not succeed. The fearsome hour of midnight pa.s.sed, then the gray dawn, the hour of dull despair, was near. Tampico felt it, and a long groan vibrated through his chattering teeth. His dog leaped up, barked savagely, the sheep began to stir, then went backing into the gloom; there was a rus.h.i.+ng of stampeding sheep and a huge, dark form loomed up. Tampico grasped his gun and would have fired, when it dawned on him with sickening horror that the Bear was thirty feet high, his platform was only fifteen, just a convenient height for the monster. None but a madman would invite the Bear to eat by shooting at him now. So Pedro flattened himself face downward on the platform, and, with his mouth to a crack, he poured forth prayers to his representative in the sky, regretting his unconventional att.i.tude and profoundly hoping that it would be overlooked as unavoidable, and that somehow the pet.i.tions would get the right direction after leaving the under side of the platform.

In the morning he had proof that his prayers had been favorably received. There was a Bear-track, indeed, but the number of black sheep was unchanged, so Pedro filled his pocket with stones and began his usual torrent of remarks as he drove the flock.

”Hyah, Capitan--you huajalote,” as the dog paused to drink. ”Bring back those ill-descended sons of perdition,” and a stone gave force to the order, which the dog promptly obeyed. Hovering about the great host of grumbling hoofy locusts, he kept them together and on the move, while Pedro played the part of a big, noisy, and troublesome second.

As they journeyed through the open country the sheep-herder's eye fell on a human figure, a man sitting on a rock above them to the left.

Pedro gazed inquiringly; the man saluted and beckoned. This meant ”friend”; had he motioned him to pa.s.s on it might have meant, ”Keep away or I shoot.” Pedro walked toward him a little way and sat down.

The man came forward. It was Lan Kellyan, the hunter.

Each was glad of a chance to ”talk with a human” and to get the news.

The latest concerning the price of wool, the Bull-and-Bear fiasco, and, above all, the monster Bear that had killed Tampico's sheep, afforded topics of talk. ”Ah, a Bear devill--de h.e.l.l-brute--a Gringo Bear--pardon, my amigo, I mean a very terroar.”

As the sheep-herder enlarged on the marvelous cunning of the Bear that had a private sheep corral of his own, and the size of the monster, forty or fifty feet high now--for such Bears are of rapid and continuous growth--Kellyan's eye twinkled and he said:

”Say, Pedro, I believe you once lived pretty nigh the Ha.s.sayampa, didn't you?”

This does not mean that that is a country of great Bears, but was an allusion to the popular belief that any one who tastes a single drop of the Ha.s.sayampa River can never afterward tell the truth. Some scientists who have looked into the matter aver that this wonderful property is common to the Rio Grande as well as the Ha.s.sayampa, and, indeed, all the rivers of Mexico, as well as their branches, and the springs, wells, ponds, lakes, and irrigation ditches. However that may be, the Ha.s.sayampa is the best-known stream of this remarkable peculiarity. The higher one goes, the greater its potency, and Pedro was from the headwaters. But he protested by all the saints that his story was true. He pulled out a little bottle of garnets, got by glancing over the rubbish laid about their hills by the desert ants; he thrust it back into his wallet and produced another bottle with a small quant.i.ty of gold-dust, also gathered at the rare times when he was not sleepy, and the sheep did not need driving, watering, stoning, or reviling.

”Here, I bet dat it ees so.”

Gold is a loud talker.

Kellyan paused. ”I can't cover your bet, Pedro, but I'll kill your Bear for what's in the bottle.”

”I take you,” said the sheep-herder, ”eef you breeng back dose sheep 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.

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