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Updated: May 4, 2025
All the west slopes of Tallac were swept by the fire, and Kellyan moved to a new hut on the east side, where still were green patches; so did the grouse and the rabbit and the coyote, and so did Grizzly Jack.
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.
Jacky, old pard, don't you know me?" But Jack stirred not, and Kellyan got up quickly. Back to the hotel he flew; there he put on his hunter's suit, smoky and smelling of pine gum and grease, and returned with a mass of honeycomb to reenter the cage. "Jacky, Jacky!" he cried, "honey, honey!" and he held the tempting comb before him. But Monarch lay as one dead now.
Rifles were taken down and cartridge-belts being swung when Kellyan called a halt. "Say, boys, we've got him safe enough. He won't try to leave the chaparral till night. If we shoot him we get the cattlemen's bounty; if we take him alive an' it's easy in the open we get the newspaper bounty, ten times as big. Let's leave all guns behind; lariats are enough."
The gold in the bottle, ten or fifteen dollars, was a trifle, and yet enough to send the hunter on the quest enough to lure him into the enterprise, and that was all that was needed. Pedro knew his man: get him going and profit would count for nothing; having put his hand to the plow Lan Kellyan would finish the furrow at any cost; he was incapable of turning back.
But what it really means is better not writ down. The riders had slipped their ropes in fear, and the Monarch, rumbling, snorting, bounding, trailed them to the hills, there to bite them off in peace, while the remnant of the gallant crew went, sadly muttering, back. Bitter words went round. Kellyan was cursed. "His fault. Why didn't we have the guns?"
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. April was bidding high Sierra snows go back to Mother Sea.
He lifted the nasty, sticky little beast and fondled him as usual, while Jill, no worse even more excusable, because less trained suffered all the terrors of his wrath and was double-chained to the post, so as to have no further chance of such ill-doing. This was a day of bad luck for Kellyan. That morning he had fallen and broken his rifle.
Here were the newly killed beeves, there the mighty footprints with the scars that spelled his name. No hound could have tracked him better than Kellyan did. Five miles away from the foot of the hills was an impenetrable thicket of chaparral. The great tracks went in, did not come out, so Bonamy sat sentinel while Kellyan rode back with the news. "Saddle up the best we got!" was the order.
The pistols had wounded him in many places. "Don't shoot don't shoot, but tire him out," the hunter urged. "Tire him out? Look at Carlos and Manuel back there. How many minutes will it be before the rest are down with them?" So the infuriating pistols popped till all their shots were gone, and Monarch foamed with slobbering jaws of rage. "Keep on! keep cool," cried Kellyan.
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