ped Bears, and the sheep-herder
remembered that it is necessary to have the door quite _light-tight_
rather than very strong, so they battened all with tar-paper outside.
But Gringo was learning "pen-traps." He did not break the door that he
did not see through, but he put one paw under and heaved it up when he
had finished the bait. Thus he baffled them and sported with the
traps, till Kellyan made the door drop into a deep groove so that the
Bear could put no claw beneath it. But it was cold weather now. There
was deepening snow on the Sierras. The Bear sign disappeared. The
hunters knew that Gringo was sleeping his winter's sleep.

XIII. THE DEEPENING CHANNEL

April was bidding high Sierra snows go back to Mother Sea. The
California woodwales screamed in clamorous joy. They thought it was
about a few acorns left in storage in the Live Oak bark, but it really
was joy of being alive. This outcry was to them what music is to the
thrush, what joy-bells are to us--a great noise to tell how glad they
were. The deer were bounding, grouse were booming, rills were
rushing--all things were full of noisy gladness.

Kellyan and Bonamy were back on the Grizzly quest. "Time he was out
again, and good trailing to get him, with lots of snow in the
hollows." They had come prepared for a long hunt. Honey for bait,
great steel traps with crocodilian jaws, and guns there were in the
outfit. The pen-trap, the better for the aging, was repaired and
re-baited, and several Black Bears were taken. But Gringo, if about,
had learned to shun it.

He was about, and the men soon learned that. His winter sleep was
over. They found the peg-print in the snow, but with it, or just
ahead, was another, the tracks of a smaller Bear.

"See that," and Kellyan pointed to the smaller mark. "This is
mating-time; this is Gringo's honeymoon," and he followed the trail
for a while, not expecting to find them, but simply to know their
movements. He followed several times and for miles, and the trail told
him many things. Here was the track of a third Bear joining. Here were
marks of a combat, and a rival driven away was written there, and then
the pair went on. Down from the rugged hills it took him once to where
a love-feast had been set by the bigger Bear; for the carcass of a
steer lay half devoured, and the telltale ground said much of the
struggle that foreran the feast. As though to show his power, the Bear
had seized the steer by the nose and