But he had stopped to examine the prints at a point a good twenty feet from the entrance to the cave. He now turned about and led Sally softly back the way they had come, while making a mental note not to venture near this area again until there had been at least one other snowstorm to cover his tracks. There should be no trail then, for whatever was in the hole to follow back to the cave.
By the time he left the shale close to where he had originally stepped onto it, his first fears had subsided to a great extent. If the bear had not come out—he might just as well assume flatly from the start that it was a bear of some sort, grizzly or black, though it was hard to believe a black had left tracks that size—it had to have already started its hibernation. And it was not likely to break that hibernation until spring. Unless something disturbed it, they could forget about it until then.
His first impulse had been to return himself and the rifle directly to the cave so that Merry and Paul would not be at the mercy of the bear, with nothing but the revolver and the crossbow to hold him off—and little good a .38 handgun would do against something like a grizzly. In fact, Jeebee doubted that any weapon they had could do him any real damage, unless a bolt from the crossbow, planted into its lower body area, would eventually bleed it to death. But by that time he could have destroyed not only the cave but both Merry and Paul.
But it was ridiculous to return, he thought, now. He could not stay forted up with them all winter. He would have to leave on hunting trips and various other things. It was not even sensible to go back and sit tight until it snowed again. They might, at this time of year, go as much as a couple of weeks without even a light snowfall.
Accordingly, he continued on his swing down to the ranch, which had been lightly touched by the snow, except for those corners where it had drifted into the exposed parts of the house or outbuildings. He got the small things he had intended to pick up—they consisted of some shingles he had rescued from the ash pile on the floor of the ranch’s former smithy and a bathroom scale that he and Merry had talked about bringing up to the cave several times but somehow had never gotten around to taking.
With the relatively light weight of these, he made a swing out into the open range and found as he had expected that except where the land dipped enough to accumulate drifted snow, the going was not bad at all. With little deep snow, and without a strong wind to herd them in a particular direction, his experience now told him, the wild cattle would be following their normal pattern of roaming freely. He swung back into the foothills at last and returned to the ranch by a route that avoided the shale slope entirely.
CHAPTER 38
Back at the cave all was well. Jeebee congratulated himself silently on having the common sense to continue his sweep instead of simply heading back here. He unsaddled Sally, put her in the corral, and returned with the saddle and the things he had gathered from the ranch to the inner room.
“We’ve got a hibernating bear for a neighbor,” he told Merry, once everything was put away.
“Bear?” Merry said, frowning. “Where?”
“More than half a mile from here,” Jeebee answered, “maybe a kilometer, or even a bit more than a kilometer. You know, the hole in the shale slope?”
“That?” said Merry.
“That,” Jeebee answered. “You remember I thought it might’ve been used as a den, before. I saw the tracks going in, just today. There weren’t any coming out. It must be a pretty big bear. It might be a grizzly.”
“Grizzly!” Merry stopped what she was doing. “I don’t like that. A grizzly, this close!”
“You know, the year round,” Jeebee said, “they could come within fifty yards of the cave here and we’d never know it. There can’t be too many grizzlies, and bears move around a lot anyway. They have to find food. Besides, remember I told you that the tracks led into the hole but not out? Whatever it is, if it’s a bear, it’s started hibernating and won’t come out until spring. We’ll just keep it in mind, and I think I’m going to insist on going hunting with just the pistol and the crossbow. You keep the rifle here from now on.”
“There ought to be some way of killing it while it’s still asleep in there,” said Merry, “if it’s a grizzly. I don’t want a grizzly anywhere near Paul.”
“I can’t think of any way,” Jeebee answered, “but if it is a grizzly, the .30/06 is rather light to kill it with a single shot unless you reach a vital area. And I don’t like the idea of trying to hit a vital area in a pitch-dark hole, particularly if it’s curled up, the way I imagine it would be if it was hibernating.”
“We could take the floodlight with the battery,” Merry said. “I could hold the light on it, while you shot it—as many times as it took.”
“And what if it came out after us in spite of the fact it had been shot several times? I’d have a rifle that was already proving it was too light, and you’d just have a revolver.”
“I could take that crazy spear of yours,” said Merry.
Jeebee snorted.
“If it came to that,” he said, “I’d take the spear and the light. You’d do the shooting. You’re the better shot.” He took a deep breath.
“In any case,” he said, “the very idea of trying to shoot it now is ridiculous. We’d just be borrowing trouble. We’d be giving it a chance to kill us both—and then what would happen to Paul? On the other hand, if we just leave it alone, it’ll sleep till spring. Then when it comes out, it’s likely to go in any direction but here. It wouldn’t have denned up here unless it belongs in this territory. If it does, then it knows that there’s cattle down below, and its first instinct on waking is going to be to head down onto the flat. It’ll know that after a winter there’ll be a number of dead cattle that’re still eatable because they were frozen and covered with snow until spring. A hungry grizzly that’s been hibernating is going to think of that dead meat first, and go for it. There’s every reason he should go straight down there, and no particular reason to come our way.”
Merry plainly was not convinced, but neither did she continue to argue. Jeebee had a sneaking feeling that it was his question about what would happen to Paul if they were both killed that had really changed her mind about going after the bear now.
He felt a little guilty, as if he had unfairly bludgeoned his way to winning the argument. But he consoled himself with the fact that after all, what he said was no more than the truth. A bear that size had to be more than a year old. If it was in this district, it knew about the cattle and had seen more than one spring, with its frozen carcasses gradually being uncovered as the snow melted. It would certainly head for the flatlands when it woke.
So they left the matter there. Jeebee sat back and waited for the next snow. Once his tracks were covered, he could relax. But instead of producing more snow, the weather perversely decided to get warmer.
Not only that, but the warming weather continued into the next day, the next, and the next. This unusual spell was then interrupted by a sudden cold snap lasting overnight, followed the next morning by a heavy, but short-term snow shower, the results of which lay on the ground for perhaps half an hour in the already bare spots exposed to the sun, and then vanished. The days went back to being warm again.
The renewal of the warm spell was an unexpected gift from the weather that gave them time to do the last-minute things that Jeebee’s collapse and the first snowstorm seemed to have lost to them.
In one of the outbuildings of the ranch, there had been the dusty, obviously long-unused potbellied stove from which Jeebee had gotten the flue for his forge. For the sake of young Paul, Merry had wanted to bring this up and vent it out their chimney as a replacement for the fireplace. As she pointed out to Jeebee, it would be much better for cooking, and much more efficient at providing heat to the inside of the cave.
During the warm days of fall, Jeebee had put off bringing it up from day to day, until suddenly he had found himself racing the onset of winter to get the skylight finished in time. By the time he did, it had been no longer possible for the two horses to take the trailer down.
The trailer had been absolutely necessary. The stove was too great a weight for either horse to carry alone. The feet would come off it, and a few other extraneous parts, but the main weight of the cast-iron body was more than even Brute could bring up the slopes. With the trailer, on the other hand, the two horses could transport it handily, provided snow had not made the slopes impassable.
Now, thanks to this freak warm spell, there was enough bare ground all the way down to the ranch so that Jeebee could try to take the trailer for it. So he did. Meanwhile, up at the cave, Merry was busy taking down some
