II.
One day after a long absence Wahb came into the lower part of his
range, and saw to his surprise one of the wooden dens that men make for
themselves. As he came around to get the wind, he sensed the taint that
never failed to infuriate him now, and a moment later he heard a loud
_bang_ and felt a stinging shock in his left hind leg, the old stiff
leg. He wheeled about, in time to see a man running toward the new-made
shanty. Had the shot been in his shoulder Wahb would have been helpless,
but it was not.
Mighty arms that could toss pine logs like broomsticks, paws that with
one tap could crush the biggest Bull upon the range, claws that could
tear huge slabs of rock from the mountain-side--what was even the deadly
rifle to them!
When the man's partner came home that night he found him on the reddened
shanty floor. The bloody trail from outside and a shaky, scribbled note
on the back of a paper novel told the tale.
It was Wahb done it. I seen him by the spring and wounded him. I tried
to git on the shanty, but he ketched me. My God, how I suffer! JACK. It
was all fair. The man had invaded the Bear's country, had tried to take
the Bear's life, and had lost his own. But Jack's partner swore he would
kill that Bear.
He took up the trail and followed it up the canon, and there bushwhacked
and hunted day after day. He put out baits and traps, and at length one
day he heard a _crash, clatter, thump_, and a huge rock bounded down a
bank into a wood, scaring out a couple of deer that floated away like
thistle-down.
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