Jack’s hogshead meanwhile had been rolled around till he was raging with disgust, and Faco, at the word of command, began to pry open the door.  The end of the barrel was close to the fence, the door cleared away; now there was nothing for Jack to do but to go forth and claw the bull to pieces.  But he did not go.  The noise, the uproar, the strangeness of the crowd affected him so that he decided to stay where he was, and the bull-backers raised a derisive cry.  Their champion came forward bellowing and sniffing, pausing often to paw the dust.  He held his head very high and approached slowly until he came within ten feet of the Grizzly’s den; then, giving a snort, he turned and ran to the other end of the corral.  Now it was the Bear-backers’ turn to shout.

But the crowd wanted a fight, and Faco, forgetful of his debt to Grizzly Jack, dropped a bundle of Fourth of July crackers into the hogshead by way of the bung.  “Crack!” and Jack jumped up.  “Fizz—­crack—­c-r-r-r-a-a-c-k, cr-k-crk-ck!” and Jack in surprise rushed from his den into the arena.  The bull was standing in a magnificent attitude there in the middle, but when he saw the Bear spring toward him, he gave two mighty snorts and retreated as far as he could, amid cheers and hisses.

Perhaps the two main characteristics of the Grizzly are the quickness with which he makes a plan and the vigor with which he follows it up.  Before the bull had reached the far side of the corral Jack seemed to know the wisest of courses.  His pig-like eyes swept the fence in a flash—­took in the most climbable part, a place where a cross-piece was nailed on in the middle.  In three seconds he was there, in two seconds he was over, and in one second he dashed through the running, scattering mob and was making for the hills as fast as his strong and supple legs could carry him.  Women screamed, men yelled, and dogs barked; there was a wild dash for the horses tied far from the scene of the fight, to spare their nerves, but the Grizzly had three hundred yards’ start, five hundred yards even, and before the gala mob gave out a long and flying column of reckless, riotous riders, the Grizzly had plunged into the river, a flood no dog cared to face, and had reached the chaparral and the broken ground in line for the piney hills.  In an hour the ranch hotel, with its galling chain, its cruelties, and its brutal human beings, was a thing of the past, shut out by the hills of his youth, cut off by the river of his cub-hood, the river grown from the rill born in his birthplace away in Tallac’s pines.  That Fourth of July was a glorious Fourth—­it was Independence Day for Grizzly Jack.

VI.  THE BROKEN DAM

A wounded deer usually works downhill, a hunted Grizzly climbs.  Jack knew nothing of the country, but he did know that he wanted to get away from that mob, so he sought the roughest ground, and climbed and climbed.