Ernest Seton - Monarch, the Big Bear of Tallac

Long before he got there a curious light shone up. He knew what that was; he had seen the two-legged ones make it near the ranch of evil smells and memories, so feared it not. He swung along from ledge to ledge in silence and in haste, for the smell of sheep grew stronger at every stride, and when he reached a place above the fire he blinked his eyes to find the sheep. The smell was strong now; it was rank, but no sheep to be seen. Instead he saw in the valley a stretch of gray water that seemed to reflect the stars, and yet they neither twinkled nor rippled; there was a murmuring sound from the sheet, but it seemed not at all like that of the lakes around.

The stars were clustered chiefly near the fire, and were less like stars than spots of the phosphorescent wood that are scattered on the ground when one knocks a rotten stump about to lick up its swarms of wood-ants. So Jack came closer, and at last so close that even his dull eyes could see. The great gray lake was a flock of sheep and the phosphorescent specks were their eyes. Close by the fire was a log or a low rough bank—that turned out to be the shepherd and his dog. Both were objectionable features, but the sheep extended far from them. Jack knew that his business was with the flock.

He came very close to the edge and found them surrounded by a low hedge of chaparral; but what little things they were compared with that great and terrible ram that he dimly remembered! The blood-thirst came on him. He swept the low hedge aside, charged into the mass of sheep that surged away from him with rushing sounds of feet and murmuring groans, struck down one, seized it, and turning away, he scrambled back up the mountains.

The sheep-herder leaped to his feet, fired his gun, and the dog came running over the solid mass of sheep, barking loudly. But Jack was gone. The sheep-herder contented himself with making two or three fires, shooting off his gun, and telling his beads.

That was Jack's first mutton, but it was not the last. Thenceforth when he wanted a sheep—and it became a regular need—he knew he had merely to walk along the ridge till his nose said, "Turn, and go so," for smelling is believing in Bear life.

Pedro Tampico and his brother Faco were not in the sheep business for any maudlin sentiment. They did not march ahead of their beloveds waving a crook as wand of office or appealing to the esthetic sides of their ideal followers with a tabret and pipe. Far from leading the flock with a symbol, they drove them with an armful of ever-ready rocks and clubs. They were not shepherds; they were sheep-herders. They did not view their charges as loved and loving followers, but as four-legged cash; each sheep was worth a dollar bill. They were cared for only as a man cares for his money, and counted after each alarm or day of travel. It is not easy for any one to count three thousand sheep, and for a Mexican sheep-herder it is an impossibility. But he has a simple device which answers the purpose. In an ordinary flock about one sheep in a hundred is a black one. If a portion of the flock has gone astray, there is likely to be a black one in it. So by counting his thirty black sheep each day Tampico kept rough count of his entire flock.

Grizzly Jack had killed but one sheep that first night. On his next visit he killed two, and on the next but one, yet that last one happened to be black, and when Tampico found but twenty-nine of its kind remaining he safely reasoned 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 cañon, 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.

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 cañon 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 were gone. Strange to tell, they had not scattered, and Pedro trailed them a mile or more in the wilderness till he reached another very small box cañon. Here he found the missing flock perched in various places on boulders and rocky pinnacles as high up as they could get. He was delighted and worked for half a minute on his bank surplus of prayers, but was sadly upset to find that nothing would induce the sheep to come down from the rocks or leave that cañon. One or two that he manoeuvered as far as the outlet sprang back in fear from something on the ground , which, on examination, he found—yes, he swears to this—to be the deep-worn, fresh-worn pathway of a Grizzly from one wall across to the other. All the sheep were now back again beyond his reach. Pedro began to fear for himself, so hastily returned to the main flock. He was worse off than ever now. The other Grizzly was a Bear of ordinary size and ate a sheep each night, but the new one, into whose range he had entered, was a monster, a Bear mountain, requiring forty or fifty sheep to a meal. The sooner he was out of this the better.