d that he was losing sheep--according
to the index a hundred were gone.

"If the land is unhealthy move out" is ancient wisdom. Tampico filled
his pocket with stones, and reviling his charges in all their walks in
life and history, he drove them from the country that was evidently
the range of a sheep-eater. At night he found a walled-in canon, a
natural corral, and the woolly scattering swarm, condensed into a
solid fleece, went pouring into the gap, urged intelligently by the
dog and idiotically by the man. At one side of the entrance Tampico
made his fire. Some thirty feet away was a sheer wall of rock.

Ten miles may be a long day's travel for a wretched wool-plant, but it
is little more than two hours for a Grizzly. It is farther than
eyesight, but it is well within nosesight, and Jack, feeling
mutton-hungry, had not the least difficulty in following his prey. His
supper was a little later than usual, but his appetite was the better
for that. There was no alarm in camp, so Tampico had fallen asleep. A
growl from the dog awakened him. He started up to behold the most
appalling creature that he had ever seen or imagined, a monster Bear
standing on his hind legs, and thirty feet high at least. The dog fled
in terror, but was valor itself compared with Pedro. He was so
frightened that he could not express the prayer that was in his
breast: "Blessed saints, let him have every sin-blackened sheep in the
band, but spare your poor worshiper," and he hid his head; so never
learned that he saw, not a thirty-foot Bear thirty feet away, but a
seven-foot Bear not far from the fire and casting a black thirty-foot
shadow on the smooth rock behind. And, helpless with fear, poor Pedro
groveled in the dust.

[Illustration: THE THIRTY-FOOT BEAR]

When he looked up the giant Bear was gone. There was a rushing of the
sheep. A small body of them scurried out of the canon into the night,
and after them went an ordinary-sized Bear, undoubtedly a cub of the
monster.

Pedro had been neglecting his prayers for some months back, but he
afterward assured his father confessor that on this night he caught up
on all arrears and had a goodly surplus before morning. At sunrise he
left his dog in charge of the flock and set out to seek the runaways,
knowing, first, that there was little danger in the day-time, second,
that some would escape. The missing ones were a considerable number,
raised to the second power indeed, for two more black ones