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The baying of the hounds appeared to swing round closer under us; to ring, to swell, to thicken until it was a continuous and melodious, wild, echoing roar. The narrowing walls of the canyon threw the echoes back and forth. Presently I espied moving dots, one blue, one brown, on the opposite slope. They were Haught and his son Edd slowly and laboriously climbing up the steep bluff.
The Iron King stared at the speaker for a moment, and then said, quite calmly: "Please to repeat that all over again, slowly and distinctly." The duke flushed to the edges of his hair, but he repeated his proposal in plain words. "You have asked Cora Haught to marry you?" demanded the Iron King. "Yes, sir." "What did she say?"
Haught said when the hounds gave tongue on the other trail this red bear awakened, sat up, and wagged his head slowly. He had never been chased by hounds. He lay down in his piny bed again. The distance was too great for an accurate shot, but Haught tried anyway, with the result that he at least scared the cinnamon off. These bear were both thin.
He leaped up with a roar of wings, sending the dust and needles flying. Then he dropped back, and like a flash darted into a thicket. Another flew straight out of the glade. Another ran like an ostrich in the same direction. I tried to get the sights on him. In vain! R.C. and Copple chased these two speeding turkeys, and Haught and I went the other way. We could find no trace of ours.
Above the head of the third gorge Copple and I ran across an enormous bear track, fresh in the dust, leading along an old bear trail. This track measured twelve inches. "He's an old Jasper, as Haught says," declared Copple. "Grizzly. An' you can bet he heard the dogs an' got movin' away from here. But he ain't scared. He was walkin'." I forgot the arduous toil.
All the people of North End, except the aged, infirm and infantile, were trooping down the valley, on the rough road between the foot of the West Ridge and the side of the river, to a fete to be given them at Rockhold on the occasion of the marriage of old Aaron Rockharrt's granddaughter, Corona Haught, to Regulas Rothsay, the governor-elect of the State.
With shrill ki-yi the pups bounded off, apparently frantic to make up for misbehavior. Soon the whole pack was in full chorus. Edd and George spurred into the brush, yelling encouragement to the hounds. This day I managed to make my horse do a little of what I wanted. To keep in sight of the Haught boys was indeed beyond me; but I did not lose sound of them.
The party went first directly to Boston, where they stayed for a few days, to attend the commencement of the collegiate school at which Master Sylvanus Haught was preparing himself to become a candidate for admission to the military academy at West Point; but where, as yet, he had not distinguished himself by application to his studies.
I did not like to hunt in a country where cattle ranged, no matter how wild they were. Then when we came to a forested ridge bare of grass and smelling of sheep, that robbed the forest of a little more glamour. Mexican sheep-herders drove their flocks up this far sometimes. Haught said bear, lion, lynx, and coyote, sometimes the big gray wolves, followed the sheep.
Here Haught got off a little to the right. Romer and I rode up a gentle slope toward a thin line of little pines, through which I could see into the pines beyond. Suddenly up jumped three big gray bucks. Literally I fell off my horse, bounced up, and pulled out my rifle. One buck was loping in a thicket. I could see his broad, gray body behind the slender trees.
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