“Let's see your gun. Humph! pretty small—38 caliber, ain't it? Wal, it'll do the work if you hold straight. Can you shoot?”
“Fairly well.”
He took his heavy Winchester, and threw a coil of thin rope over his shoulder.
“Come on. Stay close to me, an' keep your eyes peeled.”
XII. BEARS
The old hunter walked so swiftly that I had to run to keep up with him. The trail led up the creek, now on one side, again on the other, and I was constantly skipping from stone to stone. The grassy slopes grew fewer, and finally gave way altogether to cracked cliffs and weathered rocks. A fringe of pine-trees leaned over the top with here and there a blasted spear standing out white.
“I had my trap set up thet draw,” said Hiram Bent, as he pointed toward an intersecting canyon. “Just before I waked you I was comin' along here, an' I heered an all-fired racket up thar, an' so I watched. Soon three black bears come paddlin' down, an' the biggest was draggin' the trap with the chain an' log. Then I hurried to tell you. They can't be far.”
“Are they grizzlies?” I asked, trying to speak naturally.
“Nope. Jest plain black bears. But the one with the trap is a whopper. He'll go over four hundred. See the tracks? Looks like somebody'd been plowin' up the stones.”