Young Zorro by Diego Vega Page B

and see a real contest! Here a few vaqueros and their cow ponies made sport of tying down the biggest,strongest predator anywhere.
    Juan Three-fingers sang out a long, excited yelp. “Keeeee-yi-yi-yi! Look at this big fellow! He is bigger than a mountain! He could eat a ship! And angry! This big, hairy fellow wants to eat all of us for lunch! Be careful there, Bernardo! You are just big enough for this bear to pick his teeth with!”
    The crisis wasn’t over. If any one of these reatas broke, there would be big trouble.
    Pedro, one of the young vaqueros, was jumping with excitement. “This big oso will make a good fiesta spectacle. We can put him in a ring with some bad bulls and watch them fight it out! It’s not far to the pueblo, Jefe,” he called to Scar. “Let us drag Señor Oso to the mission stock ring for the fiesta.”
    Diego and Bernardo had seen bull-and-bear fights. They didn’t like them. For some it was a fine spectacle, letting brutes fight each other. They were both dangerous enough. Rampaging bulls and surprised bears had killed a few Angeleños , true enough. But it was a messy, sad show. There was no real point. The bear always won, killing bull after bull. Sometimes it tired and was gored by a fresh bull in the end. It was a cruel thing, taunting something wild.
    Scar sat on his straining horse. He shook his head no.It was too far to the pueblo, all day to drag and tease a bear to the mission’s stock ring. That was too much danger for his men and their horses. And for what? Still, this big raiding bear couldn’t be allowed to eat the rancho’s horses whenever he wanted a meal.
    â€œDiego!” he called. The boy rode around the circle of vaqueros and reatas to Scar. “My horse,” he said. Diego leaned down and took the reins of Scar’s horse.
    Scar swung down from his saddle, taking the short musket, the carabino , from behind his saddle in the same movement. He checked the flintlock, looking at the priming powder before he walked into the circle, approaching the bear. He brought the musket up, cocking it, steadied its aim, and fired. There was a double ball of white smoke, one from the musket’s flintlock, one from its muzzle. The big bear quivered, grunted once, and sank to the ground like a tent with its pegs knocked out. No one moved for a long moment.
    â€œStay away from him,” Scar said. The dead didn’t rise, but the dead weren’t always dead. He walked back to his horse, the only person not looking at the bear. He took his powder horn and bullet pouch from the pocket of his saddle’s mochila and quickly reloaded the musket. Then he waited a few more minutes.
    No one slacked his reata yet.
    It was quiet for a time. Juan Three-fingers had stopped the grunting and labored breathing of the injured horse with his boot knife. The scene had become almost peaceful.
    Scar approached the bear from behind and prodded it with the muzzle of the carabino . Nothing, no movement. He nodded. Now the reatas slacked and the vaqueros stepped down to loosen their loops and coil them. Juan opened the jaw of the bear and shook his head with a little shiver, looking at the yellowish-white teeth, terribly big.
    â€œJuan, round up those horses.” Scar pointed in the direction they had bolted. “Esteban, Julio, Carlos, Arturo—keep working these next valleys.” They mounted and galloped off in their excitement.
    Bernardo looked at Scar and waited.
    Scar nodded, as if to himself, then glanced back at the bear. “Big fellow. Big enough for a rug,” he said. “Pedro!”
    The young vaquero stepped down from his horse.
    â€œYou and the boys skin Señor Oso out. Drag his carcass over to that ravine and put some brush on it.”
    Scar was a mestizo. His mother had been a Gabrieleño. The bear was a sacred animal, part of the human family. It was well known that the most powerful sorcerers, perhaps even