With my knife I pried out of the face of the cliff a piece of stone about the size and shape of the palm of my hand, and aiming carefully I threw it at the bear. It struck him on the very point of his nose—a tender spot—and seemingly hurt him a good deal, for, with an angry snarl, he rose upright on his hind feet.
At that instant a terrific report resounded up and down the cañon, the whole charge of Joe’s ponderous weapon struck the bear full in the chest—I could see the hole it made—and without a sound the great beast dropped from the ledge, fell a hundred feet upon the rocks below, bounded two or three times and then lay still, all doubled up in a heap at the bottom.
Big Reuben had killed his last pig!
CHAPTER II
Crawford’s Basin
You might think, perhaps, as many people in our neighborhood thought, that Joe was my brother. As a matter of fact he was no relation at all; he had dropped in upon us, a stranger, two years before, and had stayed with us ever since.
It was in the haying season that he came, at a moment when my father and I were overwhelmed with work; for it was the summer of 1879, the year of “the Leadville excitement,” when all the able-bodied men in the district were either rushing off to Leadville itself or going off prospecting all over the mountains in the hope of unearthing other Leadvilles. Ranch work was much too slow for them, and as a consequence it was impossible for us to secure any help that was worth having.
What made it all the more provoking was that we had that year an extra-fine stand of grass—the weather, too, was magnificent—yet, unless we could get help, it was hardly likely that we could take full advantage of our splendid hay-crop.