"It"s down in the swamp. See the way the ponies look," agreed Jennie.
They quickly came to a break in the cottonwood grove on the edge of the mora.s.s. Instantly the ponies halted, snorting again. Ruth"s tried to rear and turn, but she was a good horsewoman.
"Oh, look!" squealed Helen. "A bear!"
"Oh, look!" echoed Jennie, quite as excited. "A bull!"
"Well, I declare!" exclaimed Ruth, her hands full for the moment with the actions of her mount. "One would think you were looking at a picture of Wall Street--with your bulls and your bears I Let me see--do!"
CHAPTER XXII
IN THE CANYON
Ruth wheeled her mount the next moment and headed it again in the right direction. She saw at last what had caused her two companions such wonder.
In a deep hole near the edge of the mora.s.s was a huge Hereford bull.
Most of the cattle in that country were Herefords.
The animal had without doubt become foundered in the swamp hole; but that was by no means the worst that had happened to him. While held more than belly-deep in the sticky mud he had been attacked by the only kind of bear in all the Rockies that, unless under great provocation, attacks anything bigger than woodmice.
A big black bear had flung itself upon the back of the bellowing, struggling bull and was tearing and biting the poor creature"s head and neck--actually eating the bull by piecemeal!
"Oh, horrors!" gasped Helen, sickened by the sight of the blood and the ferocity of the bear. "Is that a dreadful grizzly? How terrible!"
"It"s eating the poor bull alive!" Jennie cried.
Ruth had never ridden out from camp since Dakota Joe"s last appearance without carrying a light rifle in her saddle scabbard. She rode a regular stockman"s saddle and liked the ease and comfort of it.
Now she seized her weapon and c.o.c.ked It.
"That is not a grizzly, girls!" she exclaimed. "The grizzly is ordinarily a tame animal beside this fellow. The blackbear is the meat-eater--and the man-killer, too. I learned all about that in our first trip out here to the West."
"Quick! Do something for that poor steer!" begged Helen. "Never mind lecturing about it."
But Ruth had been wasting no time while she talked. She first had to get her pony to stand She knew it was not gun-shy. It was only the scent and sight of the bear that excited it.
Once the pony"s four feet were firmly set, the girl of the Red Mill, who was no bad shot, raised her rifle and sighted down the barrel at the little snarling eyes of Bruin behind his open, red jaws. The bear crouched on the bull"s back and actually roared at the girls who had come to disturb him at his savage feast.
Ruth"s trigger-finger was firm. It was an automatic rifle, and although it fired a small ball, the girl had drawn a good bead on the bear"s most vulnerable point--the base of his wicked brain! The several bullets poured into that spot, severing the vertebrae and almost, indeed, tearing the head from the brute"s shoulders!
"Oh, Ruth! You"ve done for him!" cried Helen, with delight.
"But the poor bull!" murmured Jennie. "See! He can"t get out. He"s done for."
"I am afraid they are both done for," returned Ruth. "Take this gun, Jennie. Let me see if I can rope the bull and help him out."
She swung the puncher"s lariat she carried hung from her saddle-bow with much expertness. She had practised lariat throwing on her previous trips to the West. But although she was able to encircle the bull"s bleeding head with the noose of the rope, to drag the creature out of the mora.s.s was impossible.
He was sunk in the mire too deeply, and he was too far gone now to help himself. The bear had rolled off the back of the bull and after a few faint struggles ceased to live. But Bruin"s presence made it very difficult for the girls to force their ponies closer to the dying bull.
Therefore, after all, Ruth had to abandon her lariat, tying the end of it to a tree and by this means keeping the bull from sinking out of sight after she had put a merciful bullet into him.
As they rode near the Hubbell Ranch they stopped and told of their adventure at the swamp, and a party of the boys rode out and saved both bear and bull meat from the coyotes or from cougars that sometimes came down from the hills.
The three girls had not been idly riding about the country during these several days which had been punctuated, as it were, with the adventure of the bull and the bear. That very day they had found the canyon which Mr. Hammond and the director had been hoping to find and use in filming some of the most thrilling scenes of "Brighteyes."
As Ruth was the writer of the scenario it was natural that she should be quite capable of choosing the location. The lovely and sheltered canyon offered all that was needed for the taking of the scenes indicated.
The girls went back the next day, taking Mr. Hammond with them. This time they merely glanced at the spot where the bear and the bull had died, and they did not visit the family of nesters at all. The shadowy mouth of the canyon, its sides running up steeply into the hills, was long in sight before the little cavalcade reached it.
From the mouth of it Mr. Hammond could not judge if Ruth"s selection of locality was a wise one. Certain natural attributes were necessary to fit the needs of the story she had written. When, after they had ridden a couple of miles up the canyon, he saw the cliff path and the lip of the overhanging rock on which the hero of the story and _Brighteyes_"
Indian lover were to struggle, he proclaimed himself satisfied.
"You"ve got it, I do believe," the producer declared. "This will delight Jim Hooley, I am sure. We can stake out a net down here under that rock so if either or both the boys fall, they will land all right. It will be some stunt picture, and no mistake!"
He wanted to look around the place, however, before riding back, and the girls dismounted too. The bottom of the canyon was a smooth lawn--the gra.s.s still green. For although the tang of winter was now in the air even at noon, the weather had been remarkably pleasant. Only on the distant heights had the snow fallen, and not much there.
There was a silvery stream wandering through the meadow over which the girls walked. By one pool was a shallow bit of beach, and Ruth, coming upon this alone, suddenly cried out:
"Oh, Helen! Jennie! I am a Miss Crusoe. Come here and see the unmistakable mark of my Man Friday."
"What do you mean, you ridiculous thing?" drawled Jennie. "You cannot be a Crusoe. You are not dressed in skins."
"Well, I like that!" rejoined Ruth, raising her eyebrows in apparent surprise, "I should think I was covered with skin. Why not? Am I different from the remainder of humanity?"
Of course they laughed with her as they came to view her discovery upon the sand. It was the mark of a human foot.
"And no savage, I"ll be bound," said Helen. "That is the mark of a mighty brogan. A white man"s foot-covering, no less. See! There is another footprint."
"He certainly was going away from here," Jennie Stone observed. "Who do you suppose he is?"
"I wonder if his eyes are blue and if he has a moustache?" queried Helen, languishingly.
"Bet he has whiskers and chews tobacco. I known these Western men. Bah!"
"Jennie takes all the romance out of it," said Ruth, laughing. "Now I don"t care to meet my Man Friday at all."
They ate a picnic lunch before they rode out of the lovely canyon. Mr.
Hammond was always good company, and he exerted himself to be interesting to the three girls on this occasion.
"My!" Helen remarked to Jennie, "Ruth does make the nicest friends, doesn"t she? See how much fun--how many good times--we have had through her acquaintanceship with Mr. Hammond."
Jennie agreed. But her attention was attracted just then to something entirely different. She was staring up the cliff path that Mr. Hammond had praised as being just the natural landmark needed for the scene the company wished to picture.
"Did you see what I saw?" drawled the plump girl. "Or am I thinking too, too much about mankind?"