But when Baldy Roachback crossed the
Gros Ventre Range and over the Wind River Divide to the head of the
Graybull, he does come into the story, just as he did into the country
and the life of the Meteetsee Grizzly.
The Roachback had not found a man-sign since he left Jackson's Hole,
and here he was in a land of plenty of food. He feasted on all the
delicacies of the season, and enjoyed the easy, brushless country till
he came on one of Wahb's sign-posts.
"Trespassers beware!" it said in the plainest manner. The Roachback
reared up against it.
"Thunder! what a Bear!" The nose-mark was a head and neck above Baldy's
highest reach. Now, a simple Bear would have gone quietly away after
this discovery; but Baldy felt that the mountains owed him a living, and
here was a good one if he could keep out of the way of the big fellow.
He nosed about the place, kept a sharp lookout for the present owner,
and went on feeding wherever he ran across a good thing.
A step or two from this ominous tree was an old pine stump. In the
Bitter-roots there are often mice-nests under such stumps, and Baldy
jerked it over to see. There was nothing. The stump rolled over against
the sign-post. Baldy had not yet made up his mind about it; but a new
notion came into his cunning brain. He turned his head on this side,
then on that. He looked at the stump, then at the sign, with his little
pig-like eyes. Then he deliberately stood up on the pine root, with his
back to the tree, and put his mark away up, a head at least above that
of Wahb.
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