from the ground, and with one rake of his huge claws tore off the bark
clear to the shining white wood and down nearly to the ground; and the
Blackbear shivered and whimpered with terror as the scraping of those
awful claws ran up the trunk and up his spine in a way that was horribly
suggestive.

What was it that the sight of that Blackbear stirred in Wahb? Was it
memories of the Upper Piney, long forgotten; thoughts of a woodland rich
in food?

Wahb left him trembling up there as high as he could get, and without
any very clear purpose swung along the upper benches of the Meteetsee
down to the Graybull, around the foot of the Rimrock Mountain; on, till
hours later he found himself in the timber-tangle of the Lower Piney,
and among the berries and ants of the old times.

He had forgotten what a fine land the Piney was: plenty of food, no
miners to spoil the streams, no hunters to keep an eye on, and no
mosquitos or flies, but plenty of open, sunny glades and sheltering
woods, backed up by high, straight cliffs to turn the colder winds.
There were, moreover, no resident Grizzlies, no signs even of passing
travelers, and the Blackbears that were in possession did not count.

Wahb was well pleased. He rolled his vast bulk in an old Buffalo-wallow,
and rearing up against a tree where the Piney Canon quits the Graybull
Canon, he left on it his mark fully eight feet from the ground.

In the days that followed he wandered farther and farther up among the
rugged spurs of the Shoshones, and took possession as he went. He found
the signboards of several Blackbears, and if they were small dead trees