The bear now made a dash at the giant leader of the pack, only to fall forward, dead, with its ugly nose across Big Pete's chest.

Then I remembered hearing the crack of a rifle, and knew that the Wild Mountain Man had saved our lives. I tried to rise but found my ankle so badly sprained that I could not stand on it.

Suddenly a low voice with a hint of an Irish accent said, "Sit down, stranger, while I look to your mate," and I saw the tall lithe figure of a man clothed in buckskin bending over Pete.

"Only stunned, friend," said he, and I heard no more. The blow on my head, combined with the pain from my ankle was too much for me, and now that the danger was over it was a good time to faint, and I took advantage of it.

How long I remained unconscious I do not know, but when my eyes opened again it was night; through the interlacing boughs overhead the stars were shining brightly, my head was neatly bandaged and so was my foot and ankle. I could hear our horses cropping gra.s.s near by. I raised my head and there lay Pete; he was alive I knew by his snores that issued from his nose, and we were in our own camp; but-what are those animals by our camp fire? Wolves! gaunt, s.h.a.ggy wolves!

I hastily arose to a sitting posture, but my alarm subsided when in the dim light of the fire I could trace the outline of another man's figure, and on a stick close to the stranger's head roosted a giant bird.

Could it be that this wild man of the mountain-possibly my own father-was camping with us?

CHAPTER V

"Moseyed, by gum! I'll be tarnally tarnashuned if that terri-fa-ca-cious spook hain't pulled out!" was the exclamation that awakened me the morning after our adventure with the bear.

Lazily opening my eyes I gazed a moment at the sun just peeping over the mountain, then closed them again; but when I attempted to change my position a sharp pain in my ankle thoroughly awakened me. Still I lay quiet because it was some time before I could collect my scattered senses and separate in my mind the real incident and the dream phantasms.

The pain in my ankle, the swelled and irritated condition of my nose plainly proved to me that there was no dream about my injuries, but I discovered that my head and leg were neatly bandaged with strips of fine linen. I sat for a while busily collecting the incidents of the past twenty-four hours, arranging them in my mind in their proper order and place. I cut out the dream portion from the realities with very little trouble until I reached the part where I had awakened in the night and had seen the wolves, the eagle and the Wild Hunter. I could not be sure whether that was a dream or reality. Had I seen this strange old man with his eagle and his wolf pack beside our camp fire or had I dreamed it? Had this hobgoblin man, who might be my own father, rescued me from death at the claws of the grizzly and bound my wounds for me, or was that but a dream too? Had not Big Pete saved me perhaps and cared for me afterward?

"Pete, old fellow," I said presently, rising to my elbow, "who brought me to camp? Who killed that bear? Who saved our lives?"

"The Wild Hunter," replied Pete gravely. "He bathed my head with some sort of good smelling stuff and, though I am as heavy as a dead buffaler, toted me to camp; he 'lowed that I was all sort of shuk up and a little hazy; he fixed my blanket, then he fotched you in on his shoulders just as if you was a dead antelope, fixed you up with bandages torn from handkerchiefs in your pocket, gave you a drink which you didn't seem to appreciate, but just swallowed like you were asleep, then he laid you out. I had my eye peeled on him but he said nary a word, an'

when we wuz both all comfortable he pulled out a long cigar, sot down by the fire and was smoking tha' with his bird and his wolves around him when I went to sleep.

"He cut his bullets out, as he allus does," muttered Pete a little while later.

"Who cut what bullets?" I asked.

"Whomsoever cud I mean but th' Wild Hunter, and wha's tha' been any bullets lately but in th' b'ar?" queried my companion.

"Yes, of course," I admitted, "but why do you suppose he cut out the bullets?"

"Wal, I reckon tha' might be right scarce and he haster be kinder sparing with them. I calculate you'd like to have a hatful of them b.a.l.l.s, leastwise most folks would; cause the Wild Hunter don't use no common low-flung lead for his bullets, no-sir-ree bob-horsefly! Tain't good 'nuff for a high-c.o.c.k-alorum like him-_he shoots b.a.l.l.s of virgin gold!_"

But I was more interested in what had become of this strange man than in the sort of projectiles rumor said that he used in his gun and so dismissed the subject with a request for further information about our rescuer.

"This morning when I opened my peepers," Pete continued, "I t'ought maybe the Wild Hunter had only gone off on a tramp; but he's done clared out for good, and tuk his wolves and bird with him. I'm some glad he took th' wolves, I don't sorter like the look of their mean eyes; they do say that he is a wolf himself and the head of the pack."

"What's that, Pete? Steady, old man, now let's go slow."

"All right; tha's wha' I mean ter do. 'Cause it hain't a varmint natur'

to help men folks, and he done helped us, and no mistake, and left us the bulk of the b'ar too,-only took the claws, teeth and tenderloin or two for himself and pack; that is, if he be a wolf. But we will settle that if your foot will let you walk a bit."

"How far?" I asked.

"Only over yan way to the first piece of wet ground, and the trail leads down to tha' spring tha', and tha' is quite a right smart bit of muddy swail beyont."

"All right, I'll try it," I exclaimed. But I could not touch my foot on the ground, and it was not until my guide had made me a crutch of a forked branch, padded with a piece of fur, that I was able to go limping along after Big Pete.

We followed the trail left by the Wild Hunter to the spring. The trail after that was plain, even to my inexperienced eyes; and when we reached the muddy spot the print of the moccasined feet and the dog-like tracks of the wolves were distinctly visible.

But look at Big Pete!

As motionless as a statue, with a solemn face he stoops with a rigid figure pointing to the trail! I hastened to his side and saw that the moccasin prints ceased in the middle of an open, bare, muddy place and beyond were nothing but the dog-like tracks of the wolves.

I looked up and all around; there were no overhanging branches that a man could swing himself upon, no stones that he could leap upon-nothing but the straggling bunches of ferns; but here in this open spot the Wild Hunter vanished.

We walked back in silence, for I had nothing to say, and Pete did not volunteer any further information.

CHAPTER VI

To have one's nose all but broken, both eyes blackened and a twisted ankle is a sad misfortune wherever it occurs, but when such a thing happens to a fellow many weary miles from the nearest human habitation and in a howling wilderness it might be considered anything but pleasant. Yet, strange as it may appear, among the most pleasant and precious memories I have stored away in my mind, only to be tapped upon special occasions, is the memory of the glorious days spent nursing my bruises and lolling around that far-away camp. Sometimes I listened to the quaint yarns of my unique and interesting guide or idly watched the changing colors and effects which the sun and the atmosphere produced on the snow-capped mountains of Darlinkel's Park. I made friends with our little neighbors the rock-chuck, whose home was in the base of the cliff back of the spring, and became intimate with the golden chipmunk and its pretty little black and white cousin, the four-striped chipmunk, both of which were common and remarkably tame about camp.

Back of the camp in the dark shade of the evergreens there was a bark mound composed entirely of the fragments of the conifera cones, which Pete said was the squirrel's dining room. This mound contained at least four good cart-loads of fragments and all of it was the work of the impudent little blunt-nosed red squirrels, which were plentiful in the woods.

How long it took these small rodents to heap such a ma.s.s of material together I was unable to calculate, but the mound was as large as some of the sh.e.l.l heaps made by the ancient oyster-eating men and left by them along our coast from Florida to Maine.

The numerous magpies seemed to be conscious of my admiration of their beautiful piebald plumage and to take every opportunity to show off its iridescent hues to the best advantage in the sunlight.

Pete evidently thought I was a chap of very low taste, with a great lack of discrimination in the choice of my friends among the forest folk, and he could see no reason for my intimacy with "all th' outlaws and most rascally varmints of the park."

Truth compels me to admit that the pranks of some of my little friends were often mischievous and annoying, but they were also humorous and entertaining and I laughed when the "tallow-head" jay swooped down and s.n.a.t.c.hed a tid-bit from Pete's plate just as he was about to eat it, and when the irate trapper threw his plate at the camp robber it was a charming sight to see a number of birds flutter down to feast upon the scattered food.

The loud-mouthed, self-a.s.serting fly-catcher in the cottonwood tree learned to know my whistle, and whenever I attempted to mimic him he would send back a ringing answer. The charming little lazulii buntings were tamer than the irritating dirty English sparrows at home.

It was interesting to notice how quickly all our little wild neighbors learned to know that the sound produced by banging on a tin plate meant dough-G.o.d and other good things at our camp, and as they came rustling among the gra.s.ses or fluttering from bush and trees they showed more fear of each other than they did of Pete and me.

When the myriads of bright stars would twinkle in the blue black sky or the great round-faced moon climb over the mountain tops to see what was doing in the park, the birds and chipmunks were quiet, but then the big pack-rats, with squirrel-like tails, would troop out from their secret caves and invade the camp.

In the gray dawn, while sleeping in a tent, I often awakened to hear something scamper up its steep side and then laughed to see the shadow of a comical little body toboggan down the canvas. Our pocket-knives, compa.s.ses and all other small objects were never safe unless securely packed away out of reach of these nocturnal marauders.

Our conversations around the camp fire evenings were highly interesting too, for Big Pete was a fluent talker with a wealth of stories of the Great West at his tongue's end. Indeed, the story of his family and their migration west was one that fascinated me. His father had been a trapper in the old days; he had done his share of roaming the mountains, prospecting and making his strikes, small and large, fighting Indians and living the strenuous life of the border pioneer. He had found the woman he afterward married unconscious under an overturned wagon of an emigrant train that had been raided by the Indians, and after nursing her back to health in his mining shack, had married her. With money he had worked from the "diggin's" he had acquired, by grants from the government, the beautiful and expansive mountain park where he had planned to develop a ranch. He never went very far with his project, however, for a raiding party of Indians caught him alone in the mountains and his wife found his body pinned to the ground with arrows.

The shock of his tragedy killed Big Pete's mother soon after, and the young Peter Darlinkel, then three years old, went to a nearby settlement to be brought up by an uncle and a squaw aunt. Pete became prospector, scout, trapper and hunter, using this beautiful park that became his as a result of the pa.s.sing of his father, as a private game preserve, so to speak. That is, it was private except for the intrusion of the Wild Hunter and his black wolf pack.

In a fragmentary way Big Pete told me this story and other interesting tales of this wild western country, but mostly our conversation turned to this old man of the mountains who was such a mystery to everyone, even to Big Pete, but who, despite the lugubrious reputation, had proved a kindly gentleman and a good friend to me.

There were no visible signs of a change in the weather which had been clear for weeks, and the sky was otherwise clear blue save where the white mares' tails swept across the heavens. But when we sat down to supper that evening I could hear the rumbling of distant thunder. I knew it was thunder for, although the fall of avalanches makes the same noise, avalanches choose the noon time to fall when the sun is hottest and the snows softest. Soon I could see the heads of some dark clouds peering at us over the mountains and before dark the clouds crept over the mountain tops and overcast our sky.