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Big Pete Darlinkel was a blonde, and his golden hair hung in sunny curls upon his massive shoulders; a light mustache, soft yellow beard, with a pair of the deepest, clearest, most innocent baby-like blue eyes, all made a face such as an angel might have after years of exposure to sun and wind.

Following with giant leaps came Big Pete Darlinkel down the rocky declivity, but I only looked that way for one instant, then my eyes were again fixed on the thicket, and in my excitement I arose to a standing position.

But Big Pete Darlinkel looked at the wolves, and great beads of sweat stood on his forehead. It was his turn to have the shivers. There was no more color in his face than in a peeled turnip.

For several seconds he stood in his tracks, his body keeping the same swaying motion, but after a short while he crept cautiously forward in the fog, with me at his heels, and we found ourselves at the edge of a giant fault, similar to the one in Darlinkel Park, but there was apparently no pass to let us down the towering precipices to the valley below. “Well, that was a wonderful trip,” I cried.

He never went very far with his project, however, for a raiding party of Indians caught him alone in the mountains and his wife found his body pinned to the ground with arrows. The shock of his tragedy killed Big Pete’s mother soon after, and the young Peter Darlinkel, then three years old, went to a nearby settlement to be brought up by an uncle and a squaw aunt.

The detectives seem to be all right in towns or cities and are undoubtedly brave men, but something out there appears to frighten them and they lose interest the moment they cut the trail of the wild hunter. I begin to think this wild man is a myth, too. Strange, though, that just a week ago I received another letter from Pete Darlinkel. Wait, I’ll find it.”

For a number of years this man of mystery, it seems, has been appearing and reappearing, according to Big Pete Darlinkel, my informant, but even Pete has never got in personal touch with this eccentric hermit. Neither have several detectives I have sent out there for that purpose.

Big Pete Darlinkel remained crouching in exactly the same pose he had first assumed, but his face looked sallow and worn. I marveled. Was this big westerner really awed by the situation we were facing? What disaster impended? My guide’s eyes were fixed upon an opening in the woods and I knew that something would soon bound from that spot.

There lay Big Pete Darlinkel, dead or unconscious, and within ten feet of him stood the giant bear surrounded by a vicious pack of gaunt red-mouthed wolves.

Some emigrantterrification seize him!—has found another park an’ squatted, t’ain’t more’n eight miles as a crow flies from mine, nuther, Le-loo.” He looked at the sun and muttered. “Hang me, but ’tis t’other end of my own park,” then he paused a moment and added fiercely, “if these geysers know when they are well off, they’ll steer shy of Darlinkel Park.