plank can tell no lies, and the track to the pen and from the pen was
the track of a big Bear with a cut on the hind foot and a curious
round peg-like scar on the front paw, while the logs inside, where
little torn, gave proof of a broken tooth.

"We had him that time, but he knew too much for us. Never mind, we'll
see."

So they kept on and caught him again, for honey he could not resist.
But the wreckage of the trap was all they found in the morning.

Pedro's brother knew a man who had trapped 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