He had forgotten what a fine land the Piney was: plenty of food, no
miners to spoil the streams, no hunters to keep an eye on, and no
mosquitos or flies, but plenty of open, sunny glades and sheltering
woods, backed up by high, straight cliffs to turn the colder winds.
There were, moreover, no resident Grizzlies, no signs even of passing
travelers, and the Blackbears that were in possession did not count.
Wahb was well pleased. He rolled his vast bulk in an old Buffalo-wallow,
and rearing up against a tree where the Piney Canon quits the Graybull
Canon, he left on it his mark fully eight feet from the ground.
In the days that followed he wandered farther and farther up among the
rugged spurs of the Shoshones, and took possession as he went. He found
the signboards of several Blackbears, and if they were small dead trees
he sent them crashing to earth with a drive of his giant paw. If they
were green, he put his own mark over the other mark, and made it clearer
by slashing the bark with the great pickaxes that grew on his toes.
The Upper Piney had so long been a Blackbear range that the Squirrels
had ceased storing their harvest in hollow trees, and were now using the
spaces under flat rocks, where the Blackbears could not get at them; so
Wahb found this a land of plenty: every fourth or fifth rock in the pine
woods was the roof of a Squirrel or Chipmunk granary, and when he turned
it over, if the little owner were there, Wahb did not scruple to flatten
him with his paw and devour him as an agreeable relish to his own
provisions.
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