He passed the leather case over to his two companions. The deep scars were roughly parallel and five in number. Dick was the first to understand. “A bear!” he gasped, “and a whopper, at that!”
Larry nodded.
“I never heard of a grizzly being this far south. I’ve always understood that there were only a few of them left in the United States, and that those were away up around Yellowstone Park. But I’ll bet the robber was a grizzly, just the same. Look at the width of that paw!”
“And look at the eats that are gone—only you can’t look at them,” Purdick chimed in. “He must have been empty clear down to his toes to get away with all that stuff. Do they eat everything they can chew?”
“Mighty nearly everything—if it was a grizzly,” Dick offered.
Purdick’s eyes widened. “I’m wondering now if he’s eaten our burros,” he said.
“Not quite that bad, I guess,” Larry qualified. “He was probably too busy with our stuff here to pay any attention to the jacks. It’s most likely they got scared and bolted. They could get out, easily enough, over that broken pine.”
“In that case, our first job is to go and round ’em up, while there’s daylight enough to track ’em,” Dick suggested. “Let’s take the guns, this time. It’s gnawing at my bones that we might just happen to run across Old Ephraim, and I wouldn’t mind trying to even things up a bit with the old scoundrel.”
“Sure, we’ll take the guns,” Larry agreed. “Whereabouts are they?”