"Dead as a door-nail," he replied, calmly. "Look."
I glanced over my shoulder down the slope. There, on his back among the rocks, lay the cinnamon, his great arms spread out and his head hanging over, motionless. As the snarling beast had slid past him, not ten feet away, Dick, with his Winchester repeater, had shot him once through the heart and once in the
base of the skull, so that the bear was stone dead ere he fell from the little two-foot ice-cliff at the bottom of the slope.
As for myself, I had had such a scare and was so completely exhausted by my vehement struggles during the past couple of minutes, that for a quarter of an hour I lay on the rocks panting and gasping ere I could get my lungs and my muscles back into working order again.
As soon as I could do so, however, I sat up, and holding out my hand to my companion, I said:
"Thanks, old chap. I'm mighty glad you were on hand, or, I'm afraid, it would have been all up with me."
"It was a pretty close shave," replied Dick; "rather too close for comfort. He meant mischief, sure enough. Well, he's out of mischief now, all right. Let's go down and look at him."
"I suppose," said I, "it was the bear that the sheep were looking down at when they stood up there on the ledge all in a row."
"Yes, that was it. If I'd known it was a bear they were staring at I'd have left them alone. A mountain-lion I'm not afraid of: he'll run ninety-nine times out of a hundred. But a cinnamon bear is quite another thing: the less you have to do with them, the better."
"Well, as far as I'm concerned," said I, "the less I have to do with them, the better it will suit me. If this fellow is a sample of his tribe I'm very willing to forego their further acquaintance: my first interview came too unpleasantly near to being my last. Come on; let's go down."
CHAPTER III The Mescalero Valley
My rifle we found lying beside the bear, it also having slid down the ice-slope when I dropped it.
"Well, Frank," remarked my companion, "our hunt so far doesn't seem to have had much result unless you count the experience as something."
"Which I most decidedly do," I interjected.
"You are right enough there," replied Dick; "there's no gainsaying that. Well, what I was going to say was that the day is early yet, and if you like there is still time for us to go off and have a try for a deer. I should like to take home something to show for our day's work."
"Very well," said I. "Which way should we take? There are no deer up here among the rocks, I suppose."
"Why, I propose that we go up over this ridge here and try the country to the southwest. I've never been down there myself, having always up to the present hunted to the north and east of camp; but I've often thought of trying it: it is a likely-looking country, quite different from that on the Mosby side of the divide: high mesa land cut up by deep cañons. What do you say?"
"Anything you like," I answered. "It is all new to me, and one direction is as good as another."
"Very well, then, let us get up over the ridge at once and make a start."
Having discovered a place easier of ascent than those by which we had first tried to climb up, we soon found ourselves on top of the ridge, whence we could look out over the country we were intending to explore.
It was plain at a glance that the two sides of the divide were very different. Behind us, to the north, rose Mescalero Mountain, bare, rugged and seamed with strips of snow. From this mountain, as from a center, there radiated in all directions great spurs, like fingers spread out, on one of which we were then standing. Looking southward, we could see that our spur continued for many miles in the form of a chain of round-topped mountains, well covered with timber, the elevation of which diminished pretty regularly the further they receded from the parent stem. On the left hand side of this chain the eastern, or Mosby side the country was very rough and broken: from where we stood we could see nothing but the tops of mountains, some sharp and rugged, some round and tree-covered, seemingly massed together without order or regularity. But to the south and southwest it was very different. Here the land lying embraced between two of the spurs was spread out like a great fan-shaped park, which, though it sloped away pretty sharply, was fairly smooth, except where several dark lines indicated the presence of cañons of unknown depth. The whole stretch, as far as we could distinguish, was pretty well covered with timber, though occasional open spaces showed
here and there, some of two or three acres and some of two or three square miles in extent.
"Just the country for black-tail," said Dick, "especially at this time of year the beginning of winter. For, you see, it lies very much lower on the average than the Mosby side, and the snow consequently will not come so early nor stay so late. It ought to be a great hunting-ground."
"It is a curious thing to find an open stretch like that in the midst of the mountains," said I. "What is it called?"