The riders had slipped their ropes in fear, and the Monarch, rumbling, snorting, bounding, trailed them to the hills, there to bite them off in peace, while the remnant of the gallant crew went, sadly muttering, back.

Bitter words went round.  Kellyan was cursed.

“His fault.  Why didn’t we have the guns?”

“We were all in it,” was the answer, and more hard words, till Kellyan flushed, forgot his calm, and drew a pistol hitherto concealed, and the other “took it back.”

[Illustration:  “Rumbling and snorting, he made for the friendly hills”]

XV.  THE FOAMING FLOOD

“What is next, Lan?” said Lou, as they sat dispirited by the fire that night.

Kellyan was silent for a time, then said slowly and earnestly, with a gleam in his eye:  “Lou, that’s the greatest Bear alive.  When I seen him set up there like a butte and swat horses like they was flies, I jest loved him.  He’s the greatest thing God has turned loose in these yer hills.  Before to-day, I sure wanted to get him; now, Lou, I’m a-going to get him, an’ get him alive, if it takes all my natural days.  I think I kin do it alone, but I know I kin do it with you,” and deep in Kellyan’s eyes there glowed a little spark of something not yet rightly named.

They were camped in the hills, being no longer welcome at the ranch; the ranchers thought their price too high.  Some even decided that the Monarch, being a terror to sheep, was not an undesirable neighbor.  The cattle bounty was withdrawn, but the newspaper bounty was not.

“I want you to bring in that Bear,” was the brief but pregnant message from the rich newsman when he heard of the fight with the riders.

“How are you going about it, Lan?”

Every bridge has its rotten plank, every fence its flimsy rail, every great one his weakness, and Kellyan, as he pondered, knew how mad it was to meet this one of brawn with mere brute force.

“Steel traps are no good; he smashes them.  Lariats won’t do, and he knows all about log traps.  But I have a scheme.  First, we must follow him up and learn his range.  I reckon that’ll take three months.”

So the two kept on.  They took up that Bear-trail next day; they found the lariats chewed off.  They followed day after day.  They learned what they could from rancher and sheepherder, and much more was told them than they could believe.

Three months, Lan said, but it took six months to carry out his plan; meanwhile Monarch killed and killed.

In each section of his range they made one or two cage- or pen-traps of bolted logs.  At the back end of each they put a small grating of heavy steel bars.  The door was carefully made and fitted into grooves.  It was of double plank, with tar-paper between to make it surely light-tight.  It was sheeted with iron on the inside, and when it dropped it went into an iron-bound groove in the floor.