We've tackled the wrong bear, that's all. He's beat us."
"Beat us?"
"I mean he's beat us in a square game, an' we dealt a raw hand at that in
using dogs at all. Do you want that bear bad enough to go after him my
way?"
Langdon nodded.
"What's your scheme?"
"You've got to drop pretty idees when you go grizzly hunting," began
Bruce. "And especially when you run up against a 'killer.' There won't be
any hour between now an' denning-up time that this grizzly doesn't get the
wind from all directions. How? He'll make detours. I'll bet if there was
snow on the ground you'd find him back-tracking two miles out of every six,
so he can get the wind of anything that's following him. An' he'll travel
mostly nights, layin' high up in the rocks an' shale during the day. If you
want any more shootin', there's just two things to do, an' the best of them
two things is to move on and find other bears."
"Which I won't do, Bruce. What's your scheme for getting this one?"
Bruce was silent for several moments before he replied.
"We've got his range mapped out to a mile," he said then. "It begins up at
the first break we crossed, an' it ends down here where we came into this
valley. It's about twenty-five miles up an' down. He don't touch the
mount'ins west of this valley nor the mount'ins east of the other valleys
an' he's dead certain to keep on makin' circles so long as we're after
him.
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