Oh, blind one with the gun!  All he could find in explanation was:  “You kin never tell what a Grizzly will do, but it’s good play to lay low when he has you cornered.”  It never came into his mind to credit the shaggy brute with an impulse born of good, and when he told the sheep-herder of his adventure in the pool, of his hitting high on the body and of losing the trail in the forest fire—­“down by the shack, when he turned up sudden and had me I thought my last day was come.  Why he didn’t swat me, I don’t know.  But I tell you this, Pedro:  the B’ar what killed your sheep on the upper pasture and in the sheep canon is the same.  No two B’ars has hind feet alike when you get a clear-cut track, and this holds out even right along.”

“What about the fifty-foot B’ar I saw wit’ mine own eyes, caramba?”

“That must have been the night you were working a kill-care with your sheep-herder’s delight.  But don’t worry; I’ll get him yet.”

So Kellyan set out on a long hunt, and put in practice every trick he knew for the circumventing of a Bear.  Lou Bonamy was invited to join with him, for his yellow cur was a trailer.  They packed four horses with stuff and led them over the ridge to the east side of Tallac, and down away from Jack’s Peak, that Kellyan had named in honor of his Bear cub, toward Fallen Leaf Lake.  The hunter believed that here he would meet not, only the Gringo Bear that he was after, but would also stand a chance of finding others, for the place had escaped the fire.

They quickly camped, setting up their canvas sheet for shade more than against rain, and after picketing their horses in a meadow, went out to hunt.  By circling around Leaf Lake they got a good idea of the wild population:  plenty of deer, some Black Bear, and one or two Cinnamon and Grizzly, and one track along the shore that Kellyan pointed to, briefly saying:  “That’s him.”

“Ye mean old Pedro’s Gringo?”

“Yep.  That’s the fifty-foot Grizzly.  I suppose he stands maybe seven foot high in daylight, but, ’course, B’ars pulls out long at night.”

So the yellow cur was put on the track, and led away with funny little yelps, while the two hunters came stumbling along behind him as fast as they could, calling, at times, to the dog not to go so fast, and thus making a good deal of noise, which Gringo Jack heard a mile away as he ambled along the mountain-side above them.  He was following his nose to many good and eatable things, and therefore going up-wind.  This noise behind was so peculiar that he wanted to smell it, and to do that he swung along back over the clamor, then descended to the down-wind side, and thus he came on the trail of the hunters and their dog.

His nose informed him at once.  Here was the hunter he once felt kindly toward and two other smells of far-back—­both hateful; all three were now the smell-marks of foes, and a rumbling “woof” was the expressive sound that came from his throat.