After breakfast Jack tried to get Wolf to take the
track of the grizzly, but the scent had cooled.
Next day Mescal drove the sheep eastward toward the crags, and about the
middle of the afternoon reached the edge of the slope. Grass grew
luxuriantly and it was easy to keep the sheep in. Moreover, that part of
the forest had fewer trees, and scarcely any sage or thickets, so that
the lambs were safer, barring danger which might lurk in the seamed and
cracked cliffs overshadowing the open grassy plots. Piute's task at the
moment was to drag dead coyotes to the rim, near at hand, and throw them
over. Mescal rested on a stone, and Wolf reclined at her feet.
Jack presently found a fresh deer track, and trailed it into the cedars,
then up the slope to where the huge rocks massed.
Suddenly a cry from Mescal halted him; another, a piercing scream of
mortal fright, sent him flying down the slope. He bounded out of the
cedars into the open.
The white, well-bunched flock had spread, and streams of jumping sheep
fled frantically from an enormous silver-backed bear.
As the bear struck right and left, a brute-engine of destruction, Jack
sent a bullet into him at long range.
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