starts, and presently their barking changed in tone and told the man that they had found something of which they were not afraid.  Then the superintendent pushed his way through the bushes and found the bear dead.  The big slug from the musket had entered his throat and traversed him from stem, to stern, and spouting his life blood in quarts he had gone half a mile before his amazing vitality ebbed clean away and left him a huge heap of carrion.

It is the tradition of the mountain that the ursine shepherd was none other than Old Clubfoot, and it is not worth while to dispute with the faith of a man who follows sheep in the solitudes.

* * * * *

Like Phra the Phoenician, Old Clubfoot could not stay dead, and when there was trouble afoot in the world, with tumult and fighting, no grave was deep enough, no tomb massive enough to hold him.  His next recrudescence was in Old Tuolumne, where he forgot former experiences with steel traps and set his foot into the jaws of one placed in his way by vindictive cattlemen.  Attached to the chain of the trap was a heavy pine chunk, and Old Clubfoot dragged the clog for many miles, leaving through the brush a trail easily followed, and lay down to rest in a thicket growing among a huddle of rocks.

Hot upon the trail came two hunters, Wesley Wood and a Sclavonian whose name was something like Sakarovitch, and had been simplified to Joe Screech.  Wood was certain that the bear had stopped in the thicket, which was almost on the verge of one of the walls of Hetch-Hetchy Valley, a replica of Yosemite on half scale, and he was too old a hand at the game to follow the trail in.  One experience with a bear in the brush is enough to teach the greatest fool in the world, if he survives, that wild animals do not lie down to rest without taking precautions against surprise by possible pursuers.  They do not stop short in their tracks and go to sleep where any chance comer may walk over them, but make a half circle loop or letter U in the trail and lie where they can watch the route by which they came.

Joe Screech had not learned this, and he jeered at Wood for halting at the thicket.  Wood admitted that he was afraid to follow the trail another foot and tried to hold Joe back, but Joe had killed black bears and knew nothing of Grizzlies, and he had a contemptuous opinion of the courage of bears and a correspondingly exalted belief in his own.  At least he was afraid somebody might suspect him of being afraid, and he confounded caution with cowardice in others.

So Joe Screech laughed offensively at Wood as he strode into the thicket.  “If you’re afraid,” he said, “you stay there and I’ll run the bear out.  Maybe you’d better climb a tree.”

“That’s just what we both would do if we had any sense.  Joe Screech, you are the damnedest fool in Tuolumne.  That bear’ll teach you something if he don’t kill you.”

“Oh, climb a tree and watch my smoke,” and Joe passed out of sight.