"Well, it ain't Mexicans, that's a cinch, for the wind is blowing up the trail," mused Pete, "and whatever she smells is coming down. Well, no use worrying about it. The sooner we get busy and get that log across, the sooner we'll be on our way. I'll just hitch old Maud to this tree, and then we'll get to work."
Maud, still prancing and snorting alarmedly, was tied to the tree in a few seconds. The two adventurers, bracing themselves at every step, started to climb up the shale toward the dead tree, which they wished to roll down the incline to connect the two ends of the broken trail.
"Now, I'll take that far end and you take this, and when I say so, we both shove, see?" said Pete. After some difficulty on the slippery foothold the shale afforded, they reached the log, which was nothing more or less than a huge pine trunk, sixty feet or more in length. Had it not been for the manner in which it had been caught on the pinnacle of two rocks at either end, they could not have hoped to move it. Balanced as it was, however, a touch set it rocking.
"Ready?" hailed Pete, after he had scrambled to his end of the log. He laid his hands on the fallen trunk and braced his feet and muscles for a mighty heave.
"All right!" hailed Jack, doing the same, when suddenly his expression of energy froze on his face, and he grew pale under his tan.
"Oh, Pete! oh!" screamed the boy, "look behind you!"
Pete, who stood with his back toward the upper end of the cañon, faced around from his grip on the timber. As he did so he echoed Jack's cry of horror.
Standing at the opposite edge of the broken trail—not twenty feet from him—was a huge, gaunt grizzly.
As it gazed upon the prey on which it had lumbered so unexpectedly, the horrible brute's little pig eyes blazed malevolently, and its huge fangs began to drip as if in anticipation of the feast to come.
