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