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.”