The men read the story as though in print; yes, better, for bits of plank can tell no lies, and the track to the pen and from the pen was the track of a big Bear with a cut on the hind foot and a curious round peg-like scar on the front paw, while the logs inside, where little torn, gave proof of a broken tooth.

“We had him that time, but he knew too much for us.  Never mind, we’ll see.”

So they kept on and caught him again, for honey he could not resist.  But the wreckage of the trap was all they found in the morning.

Pedro’s brother knew a man who had trapped Bears, and the sheep-herder remembered that it is necessary to have the door quite light-tight rather than very strong, so they battened all with tar-paper outside.  But Gringo was learning “pen-traps.”  He did not break the door that he did not see through, but he put one paw under and heaved it up when he had finished the bait.  Thus he baffled them and sported with the traps, till Kellyan made the door drop into a deep groove so that the Bear could put no claw beneath it.  But it was cold weather now.  There was deepening snow on the Sierras.  The Bear sign disappeared.  The hunters knew that Gringo was sleeping his winter’s sleep.

XIII.  THE DEEPENING CHANNEL

April was bidding high Sierra snows go back to Mother Sea.  The California woodwales screamed in clamorous joy.  They thought it was about a few acorns left in storage in the Live Oak bark, but it really was joy of being alive.  This outcry was to them what music is to the thrush, what joy-bells are to us—­a great noise to tell how glad they were.  The deer were bounding, grouse were booming, rills were rushing—­all things were full of noisy gladness.

Kellyan and Bonamy were back on the Grizzly quest.  “Time he was out again, and good trailing to get him, with lots of snow in the hollows.”  They had come prepared for a long hunt.  Honey for bait, great steel traps with crocodilian jaws, and guns there were in the outfit.  The pen-trap, the better for the aging, was repaired and re-baited, and several Black Bears were taken.  But Gringo, if about, had learned to shun it.

He was about, and the men soon learned that.  His winter sleep was over.  They found the peg-print in the snow, but with it, or just ahead, was another, the tracks of a smaller Bear.

“See that,” and Kellyan pointed to the smaller mark.  “This is mating-time; this is Gringo’s honeymoon,” and he followed the trail for a while, not expecting to find them, but simply to know their movements.  He followed several times and for miles, and the trail told him many things.  Here was the track of a third Bear joining.  Here were marks of a combat, and a rival driven away was written there, and then the pair went on.  Down from the rugged hills it took him once to where a love-feast had been set by the bigger Bear; for the carcass of a steer lay half devoured, and the telltale ground said much of the struggle that foreran the feast.  As though to show his power, the Bear had seized the steer by the nose and held him for a while—­so said the trampled earth for rods—­struggling, bellowing, no doubt, music for my lady’s ears, till Gringo judged it time to strike him down with paws of steel.