by Max Brand
“Well?” Sandy asked.
Dunstan said no more, but he took notice that, according to his speech, Sandy Sweyn took with him neither horse nor rifle when he left the house. Neither would he carry flour or bacon or any of the other necessities of camping.
“And why not?” Steve McGuire roared at him.
“It’s a lot of weight,” Sandy said in apology. “And if I got a pinch of salt along….”
“You get along,” McGuire said. “You’re too weird to be right.”
McGuire said afterward to the boss of the ranch: “There ain’t gonna be no good come out of him. If he does you good by killing that bear, like I think that he’s gonna do, he’ll do you a bigger harm in some other way.”
“How could he do me a harm?” asked the rancher. “Will you tell me that?”
“He tamed a horse for you already,” the cook responded. “And I’d think that you might’ve learned from that just how useful a gent like him can be. What use did you get from the horse, except to get slammed on the ground? Besides that, ain’t he tapped you for five thousand dollars, or something like that?”
Dunstan groaned with the recollection. He said at last: “Nitroglycerin is a pretty dangerous explosive, but if we didn’t have it, we couldn’t make dynamite. This kid is a high explosive, too. I’m going to learn how to handle him.”
“Bah!” said McGuire. “Put him in the prize ring, and let it go at that. Be his manager, and you’ll make money out of him if you can ever get up his courage to the point of taking on a fight.”
They watched Sandy amble leisurely across the top of the next hill and then disappear from view.
Twelve
The direction in which Sandy Sweyn started off was that leading toward the spot where the yearling had been killed by the great grizzly. When he had reached the spot of the killing, he made no attempt to follow up the trail of the bruin. Instead, he busied himself for some time with strangely minute details. He regarded the trail, not to follow it, but to make out all of its peculiarities—the length of the two hind paws and the length of the front one, the twisted claw on the right hind foot, and the broken claw on the right front foot, the average length of stride as the bruin walked, as he ambled, and as he galloped at full speed.
After this, Sandy lay down in a spot where the trees wove a motley pattern of shadow above him, and he thought drowsily upon the problem that lay before him until kind sleep closed his eyes.
He slept until far into the afternoon, and when he wakened, he was ready to work. Appetite did not bother him. Although Sandy made vast assaults upon the larder when the spirit moved him, he also cared not to eat more than once a day.
But what would be the dictates of the stomach of the great bear? Roots, cattle killing, sheep raiding, the demolition of an ant hill—indeed, almost anything might be to the point with a bruin. What Sandy finally decided upon were the rich stores of berries that could be found loading the bushes of the uplands.
In this direction he turned and made off, not in haste, but with a long, stretching step that never varied. It carried him over, up, and down, rough and level, with an equal speed. There were five hours until sundown, and in the five hours he put behind him twenty-five miles—which, over that rough going, would have been a heavy whole day’s march for any other man.
He slept again until midnight. Then he was up and marching until dawn.
Here he made his second halt. He had climbed out of the rolling brown hills. He had passed the foothills of the range. Now he was in a chilly region of pines, with great mountain heads going up about him and thronging in the sky, their shoulders partly veiled in the thin lawn of lodgepole pine, their black throats gleaming in the morning light, their heads now bald, now covered with magnificent white.
Here Sandy made a halt again. He knocked over a mountain grouse with a stone. No need to waste a bullet on the stupid, fearless bird. He had that and his cousin roasted for breakfast. Then he climbed into the biggest tree that he could find and surveyed the mountains more clearly, and especially the bottom of the valley.
It was just such a range as a bear might like. Fifty miles away were the cattle ranches, and the sheep ranges were nearer. His lordship could have beef or mutton when he so desired. Here was a valley where he could levy his tribute of honey and ants and of luscious, pale-white roots, among the damp shadows. Yonder was a stream, idling into little pools, beside which he could lie, and flick out the darting fish by the magic of either forepaw. On either hand, too, there were the uplands with their sparser growths of trees but their abundant covering of berry-laden bushes. Higher still were the serene heights where the forest dared not venture—where the summer was short, and where the winter came back to dwell every night—where the insects lived in mighty colonies.
It was a perfect realm for a grizzly. He lay between two stalwart ranges, and from these rampart walls he could look down upon undiscovered kingdoms on either hand, ruled over, no doubt, by monarchs like himself. Perhaps, at times, the tyrannical desire of the very strong came upon him, and he contemplated descents for the sake of conquest. But the descents were never made. There was too rich a soil here at home, too many familiar faces of things and events. Above all things, the bear, and the grizzly above all other bears, is an economist. He lives for the moment, like a base fellow, and has no more romance in his make-up than goes to the robbing of a wretched ant hill.
These were matters that Sandy took for granted. He had found, he knew, the real home of the king of the lower ranges. Unless the big fellow were really out on a cattle rampage to extend over a long period, it was much more than likely that after his recent kills he had returned to the uplands and to the fat berries that were turning stale there for want of his attention—turning stale by the tons and tons for lack of his regal presence.
From the topmost fork of the big tree, Sandy had regard for all of this. Then he climbed down and began to make a circuit of the valley. He had not gone four miles before he came on a trail. He could recognize it without stooping to make measurements. It was Buck who, exactly according to the predictions of Sandy, had returned, tired of his cattle raiding, to this more peaceful and congenial work of berrying.
Sandy took two steps, leaped, and caught a branch. Then he pitched himself up among the branches—looking like a madman, so rapidly did he work. Foot and hand were accomplishing only the objects that had been planned by the mind of Sandy, and so he went almost noiselessly up through the tree until, once more, he lay, precariously balanced, and studied the forest beneath him.
There were signs and signs to Sandy. The mist that hung upon his mind when other men were near him now lifted a little, and then a little more. He was like one awakening. His glance roved upward, where the eagle tipped and slid sidewise upon great, patient wings as it hung there at watch. He looked downward, where a red squirrel was already venturing down the trunk of the very tree up which he had climbed, going about its business again with the invincible impertinence of its race. Yonder, he saw a blue jay, dipping up and down among the trees, like a sea bird skimming the waves, scolding at a great rate.
It was so far away that it was only a flashing blue jewel in the morning sun, so far away that ears less marvelous than the ears of Sandy would have heard no sign of a sound. He heard, and he guessed at once what was up.
He climbed down the tree in a manner even stranger than his manner of ascent. As an eagle closes its wings and drops, stiff and straight, through the air, so Sandy stiffened his body and dropped down through the tree, only breaking the speed of his fall by an occasional grip on a branch as he passed. Even the monstrous strength of his arms was tried by those strains.
However, he was on the ground almost as suddenly as though he had descended at a single bound to it. Then he set forward across the forest, abandoning his ordinary walk and breaking into a run. What a speed was that of Sandy Sweyn when he chose to run! Long striding
like that of a running horse, smoothly and swiftly he whipped along with a soundless step, or with only a rustle and a whisper among the grasses to betoken his passing.
He came to the place above which he had seen the blue jay flashing. Though he reached the spot, the blue jay was no longer there. It was a place where a great fallen trunk had been rolled over by the Herculean strength of the grizzly, which had then fed upon the worms and the insects that wriggled out at the touch of the strange day. For the stomach of the grizzly is truly omnivorous; nearly all that lives is welcome to his great paunch, particularly when he is lining his ribs with a blanket of fat against the long winter siesta.
The grizzly had finished his task at the log and gone on. Sandy only paused to try the weight of the tree with his own powerful arm. He could make it tremble through all its bulk, but he could not actually stir it.
After that, he could have followed the trail of the grizzly readily enough across the forest. It is not such a simple matter to follow my lord, the grizzly. Of all the brains that live in the wild, his is the most cunning, just as his paw and his jaw are among the most dreadful in strength. His scent is a keen one, but his power of hearing is a real miracle—almost like the ear of the owl.
Sandy did not choose to blunder along such a trail, and perhaps become presently the hunted instead of the hunter. For one can never tell what vagary will strike the brain of the grizzly. As he treks steadily along toward the berry beds, his mind may be crossed by the ravishing vision of a certain root patch in the hollow of the valley, or as he heads for the root patch, he may pause to follow a trail of busy ants.
Up another tree went Sandy, but he was hardly at its top when he saw what he wanted. It was not a hundred yards away that the air was turned into confusion. There was a whirlpool of disturbance, a visible movement of the thin air itself, rather than anything palpable. There were tiny specks in movement, and Sandy knew by old experience that this was the swarming of a hive of bees. The bear was on the trail of honey.
Once more Sandy dropped to the ground through the branches and started for the place ahead of him. He went with more care, since the distance was so short. This time he traveled in a semicircle, so that he would come at the bees against the strong wind that was blowing, and so keep scent and sound of him, if possible, from the bear. As for eyes, the bear is not gifted extraordinarily with them. For that matter, there are no hawk eyes among four-footed creatures, no eyes, even, to match the dull eyes of man himself.
Sandy made his detour and slid through the pines until he had an unbroken view of a clearing, just before him, and in the clearing the outline of a monstrous grizzly reared against the trunk of a tree, busily tearing it open with his steel talons. Sandy stopped short in the midst of his next step, for he found that he was not the only watcher of the scene.
Just before him there was a great, shadowy figure, staring intently. Another grizzly was watching the theft of the hive.
Thirteen
They were both males, and this made the event doubly interesting to Sandy. He pressed himself close to the trunk of a tree and stood at gaze, perfectly confident that the two would presently be so absorbed in the doings of one another that he would not be heeded unless he actually shouted at their ears.
For grizzly males do not meet in this fashion unless there is an excellent reason for it. When they are young—yes, that is a different matter. A youngster may well wander onto a range, hoping that he will be able to make it his, only to meet with the rightful possessor on whose fishing streams and berry patches and rooteries he has been poaching. A few cuffs end the fray, and the youth scampers away to hunt for more peaceful hunting grounds, even though they be more barren ones as well. As for males, unless they be old and weak of wit, they do not venture into foreign estates except when dire calamities draw them away from their own kingdoms.
Of all of this, Sandy was a little better aware than anyone else in the world. Therefore, he fairly gaped at the two. He who stood up at the bee tree was not the object of his quest. The formidable Buck was equipped with certain defects in the claws, with which Sandy was familiar. This fellow at the bee tree was a dark-robed giant with whose paws nothing whatever could be found at fault. He, who squatted in the brush, therefore, a dirty cream-gray in color, must be the cattle killer.
The honey seeker was now furiously at work with the heart of his problem. His powerful claws had already torn away bark and the outer and softer layers of the wood of that big tree. Although the core of the trunk was made of much sterner stuff, it also had to yield to the ripping claws and tearing teeth. Presently his whole body shaking with terrible greed, the big dark-robed fellow pressed closer to the tree and began to wolf down the masses of honey.
Buck raised himself a little in the shadow of the trees. Behind the veil of the brush, Sandy could almost feel his envy at this wonderful feast.
The bees, swarming in brown-and-amber-flashing armies, made wild assaults upon the big bear, but all in vain. Whether they lighted on face or tangles, coat or paws, he paid no attention to the myriad of their stings but continued to gorge himself.
Only when the main mass of the honey had been consumed, he drew out his head from the tree and made a few careless passes with his paws to beat away some of the legions of infuriated honey makers.
There was more to be done in that nest. There were the grubs and the last remnants of the wax and honey to be devoured. As for the choice in delicacies, no grizzly would very well know how to choose between a bit of honey and the same weight of honey-fed grub.
So he at the tree paid no heed to the stealthy progress of Buck at his rear. Buck was moving like the best of hunters. A grizzly has not quite the uncanny ability of the moose to move through heavy brush without a sound, but still six or seven hundred pounds of bear will be maneuvered with wonderful silence through crackling underbrush. Buck, on mischief bent, and for revenge, slid on like a shadow among shadows.
He came out to the exact rear of this intruder upon his lands, and stole forward, foot by foot. Sandy shifted his place to gain a nearer view. When he was drawing nearer to the dark stranger, one of the big feet of Buck snapped a small straw beneath him. Only the ghost of a sound, but it was enough to reach the electrically sensitive ears of the other even though they were partly muffled by the surrounding core of the tree. He jerked out his head.
However, Buck was instantly attacking. He leaped forward with a lightness wonderful in one of his bulk, reared, and struck like lightning with either forepaw. The weight of those blows would have torn the ribs out of a range bull, and, aimed at the head of the other grizzly, they knocked him flat.
He fell with a roll, however, and came to his feet as Buck rushed in to finish the fight with his teeth. Alas for too much eagerness. The dark-coated stranger was rearing as Buck rushed in, and the full weight of a driving forepaw landed on the snout of Sandy’s quarry.
It was a solid stroke and stopped the charge of Buck as effectually as ever a well-aimed drive stopped a rushing pugilist in the ring. Buck, crumpling back on his hindquarters, came only half erect. Before he could gain his balance, the stranger was on him.
Nothing but the effect of the first surprise had enabled Buck to stand up to the other for even this length of time. If Buck himself had some six hundred pounds of durable weight and might, the stranger had a vital advantage of more than a hundred in weight. Besides, he was a good span of years younger. Youth had enabled him to recuperate quickly from the opening blows of his enemy. Youth now gave him the speed to lunge in, strangely like a human being, and grip the throat of Buck as the latter went down. What a grip was there!
There is no bear that will not prefer infinitely to do his battles with the marvelous cunning and might of his forepaws. But when it comes to the finishing touches, he has jaws unmatched in the whole range of the American wilderness. A very admirable pair of jaws was now clamped in the throat of Buck.
He struggled as well as he could. It was only chance that gave him a moment’s respite. One of the forepaws of the stranger came close to his own choking, gaping mouth, and instantly his great teeth were clamped upon it. A roar of fury and pain—and the two were separated.
Once more they rushed together. Now a forepaw of the big dark bear dangled useless. He came off a bad second in the exchange of long-range blows, and so he pushed in close for the teeth again. The weight of his lunge was too much for Buck again. Down he went. Again the teeth of the stranger plunged into the throat.
Thirty seconds of writhing, gasping, and snarling, and then the body of Buck quivered and lay still. Grinding deep through fur and flesh, the blunt canines of the conqueror had found the life nerve and destroyed it. Never again would Buck wander down toward the cattle ranges to eat his fill.
One tentative blow of his unwounded paw was tried by the victor. When Buck made no response, there were no further insults. The victor ambled slowly away, pausing to shake himself now and then, and limping heavily as his weight came rolling onto his badly bitten paw. Until, at length, that paw was lifted altogether, and the big chap went awkwardly off on three legs.
A moment later, Sandy was busily at work on the job of skinning. First a long slit down the belly, and then one down each leg. After that there followed a session of cutting and tugging. It is a hard task for two skillful men to take the robe from a big bear. In the mighty arms of Sandy there resided a strength sufficient to do it all.
* * * * *
Three days later Peter Dunstan came in for his dinner and sat wearily at the head of the table in the ranch house, weary but happy. The bitter sun and the desert wind had been in his face all the day, but his eyes could squint the light away, and his skin had been weathered to the strength of leather. Therefore, he endured the fatigue willingly. Having ranged far and found his cattle in excellent condition, already proving the value of the new pastures that had been opened to them on the Morgan place, Dunstan was content. As he ate his supper in silence, a new vision formed before his eyes of a second purchase that he might be able to make soon. For the Gregor Ranch that adjoined Morgan’s old holdings upon the farther side was in poor hands. Gregor himself had lost so much money that he must soon be willing to sell, and to sell very cheap, indeed.