The Grizzly looked into the shack, then passed to the pig-pen, killed the largest there, for this was a new kind of meat, and carrying it off, he made his evening meal.

He came again and again to that pig-pen.  He found his food there till his wound was healed.  Once he met with a spring-gun, but it was set too high.  Six feet up, the sheep-folk judged, would be just about right for such a Bear; the charge went over his head, and so he passed unharmed—­a clear proof that he was a devil.  He was learning this:  the human smell in any form is a smell of danger.  He quit the little valley of the shack, wandering downward toward the plains.  He passed a house one night, and walking up, he discovered a hollow thing with a delicious smell.  It was a ten-gallon keg that had been used for sugar, some of which was still in the bottom, and thrusting in his huge head, the keg-rim, bristling with nails, stuck to him.  He raged about, clawing at it wildly and roaring in it until a charge of shot from the upper windows stirred him to such effort that the keg was smashed to bits and his blinders removed.

Thus the idea was slowly borne in on him:  going near a man-den is sure to bring trouble.  Thenceforth he sought his prey in the woods or on the plains.  He one day found the man scent that enraged him the day he lost his “Silver-brown.”  He took the trail, and passing in silence incredible for such a bulk, he threaded chaparral and manzanita on and down through tule-beds till the level plain was reached.  The scent led on, was fresher now.  Far out were white specks—­moving things.  They meant nothing to Gringo, for he had never smelt wild geese, had scarcely seen them, but the trail he was hunting went on.  He swiftly followed till the tule ahead rustled gently, and the scent was body scent.  A ponderous rush, a single blow—­and the goose-hunt was ended ere well begun, and Faco’s sheep became the brother’s heritage.

XIV.  THE CATARACT

Just as fads will for a time sway human life, so crazes may run through all animals of a given kind.  This was the year when a beef-eating craze seemed to possess every able-bodied Grizzly of the Sierras.  They had long been known as a root-eating, berry-picking, inoffensive race when let alone, but now they seemed to descend on the cattle-range in a body and make their diet wholly of flesh.

One cattle outfit after another was attacked, and the whole country seemed divided up among Bears of incredible size, cunning, and destructiveness.  The cattlemen offered bounties—­good bounties, growing bounties, very large bounties at last—­but still the Bears kept on.  Very few were killed, and it became a kind of rude jest to call each section of the range, not by the cattle brand, but by the Grizzly that was quartered on its stock.