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 hell-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 Hassayampa, 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 Hassayampa 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 Hassayampa, 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 Hassayampa 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 quantity 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