out a long and flying column of reckless, riotous riders, the Grizzly
had plunged into the river, a flood no dog cared to face, and had
reached the chaparral and the broken ground in line for the piney
hills. In an hour the ranch hotel, with its galling chain, its
cruelties, and its brutal human beings, was a thing of the past, shut
out by the hills of his youth, cut off by the river of his cub-hood,
the river grown from the rill born in his birthplace away in Tallac's
pines. That Fourth of July was a glorious Fourth--it was Independence
Day for Grizzly Jack.



VI. THE BROKEN DAM


A wounded deer usually works downhill, a hunted Grizzly climbs. Jack
knew nothing of the country, but he did know that he wanted to get
away from that mob, so he sought the roughest ground, and climbed and
climbed.

He had been alone for hours, traveling up and on. The plain was lost
to view. He was among the granite rocks, the pine trees, and the
berries now, and he gathered in food from the low bushes with
dexterous paws and tongue as he traveled, but stopped not at all until
among the tumbled rock, where the sun heat of the afternoon seemed to
command rather than invite him to rest.

The night was black when he awoke, but Bears are not afraid of the
dark--they rather fear the day--and he swung along, led, as before, by
the impulse to get up above the danger; and thus at last he reached