Novel 1968 - Down The Long Hills (v5.0) by Louis L’Amour Page B

puzzled by something. One of the forepaws, he decided, was curiously crippled, and mentally he began to call the grizzly Old Three-Paws.
    It was already late on the second day in the glen when Hardy found the tracks. To leave now, with their fish still not thoroughly smoked, and to ride out and try to find another camp at this hour was more than he wanted to do.
    “We’ll stay,” he said to Betty Sue, “but if you hear anything in the night, you touch me awake. But don’t move, and don’t speak.”
    She looked at him with big eyes. “Why?”
    “Just do what I tell you,” he said firmly.
    “Why?”
    He did not want to tell her, but it was better than having her asking questions. “I think there’s a bear somewhere around,” he said, “a big bear.”
    Suddenly he thought of Big Red. The small space in which he had picketed the stallion gave him too little room. It was no more than fifty yards across, and scarcely that wide. Not enough room to get away, nor enough to fight in, and no living creature he knew of could match a grizzly. And Hardy thought that, while a grizzly prefers nuts and berries or roots, he would not miss a chance to add red meat to his diet.
    It was already dusk, but he made his decision—they would have to leave. They would have to go at once.
    Hurriedly he began to get their few things together. He started toward Big Red, and the horse side-stepped nervously, keeping his head turned toward the forest. His ears were pricked, his eyes wide, his nostrils flaring.
    “All right, Red,” the boy said gently. “You let me put Betty Sue up. We’re going to leave.”
    The stallion ducked his head a little, but his eyes stayed on the forest.

    O LD THREE-PAWS WAS coming on. He was a huge grizzly, a little past his prime, and he was cranky. Born with a streak of meanness, it had doubled and redoubled since the injury to his paw long before.
    He had been on a long sweep around his territory, a sweep some twenty miles around, and he was coming back to that corner he much preferred. He was returning from an unsuccessful hunt, hungry and fierce.
    The wind was from him and toward them, or he might have caught the man-smell then and turned aside. But as he drew nearer he caught tantalizing, unfamiliar odors mingled with familiar ones. He recognized the smell of horse—he had eaten horse once or twice—and he knew the smell of raw fish.
    Old Three-Paws weighed about nine hundred pounds. He was not quite as quick as he used to be, but he was still quick, and he could crush the skull of an ox with one blow of his good paw. He feared nothing on earth, and earlier that day he had lumbered past a mountain lion. It spat and snarled, then darted past him on the narrow trail, turning to snarl after him. Old Three-Paws ignored the cat as something beneath his notice.
    He was not far from the camp when he first smelled horse; then he got the smell of smoke, which he did not like, and that tantalizing smell of smoked fish, which was different from any smell he had ever encountered before.
    Old Three-Paws stopped on the trail and lifted his nose inquisitively. He was not afraid, but he was curious. This was a narrow, secluded canyon. His own den, where he would soon be crawling in for the winter, was only a short distance farther on. He sniffed again, and growled deep in his chest. Now there was, faintly, a tinge of man-smell on the wind.
    He left the trail and went down the slope toward the water, pausing from time to time to sniff the wind. He drank at the stream, stared into the gathering dusk, for it was darker among the trees, and then he turned again toward the smell. He was hungry, and he wanted meat…and there were, too, other possibilities of food where the man-smell was. He had raided camps before this…and gotten away with it.
    Three miles farther back on the trail, Ashawakie had come upon the trail of his old enemy. With a thrill of superstitious fear, he recognized the bear track, then noted the