at till drunk--locoed--then
go crazy and keel sheep just for fun. He get beeg bull by nose and
drag like rat for fun. He keel cow, sheep, and keel Face, too, for
fun. He devil. You promise me you keel heem; you nevaire keel."

This is a condensation of Pedro's excited account.

And there was yet one more--the big Bear that owned the range from the
Stanislaus to the Merced, the "Monarch of the Range" he had been
styled. He was believed--yes, known to be--the biggest Bear alive, a
creature of supernatural intelligence. He killed cows for food, and
scattered sheep or conquered bulls for pleasure. It was even said that
the appearance of an unusually big bull anywhere was a guaranty that
Monarch would be there for the joy of combat with a worthy foe. A
destroyer of cattle, sheep, pigs, and horses, and yet a creature known
only by his track. He was never seen, and his nightly raids seemed
planned with consummate skill to avoid all kinds of snares.

The cattlemen clubbed together and offered an enormous bounty for
every Grizzly killed in the range. Bear-trappers came and caught some
Bears, Brown and Cinnamon, but the cattle-killing went on. They set
out better traps of massive steel and iron bars, and at length they
caught a killer, the Mokelumne Grizzly; yes, and read in the dust how
he had come at last and made the fateful step; but steel will break
and iron will bend. The great Bear-trail was there to tell the tale:
for a while he had raged and chafed at the hard black reptile biting
into his paw; then, seeking a boulder, he had released the paw by
smashing the trap to pieces on it. Thenceforth each year he grew more
cunning, huge, and destructive.

Kellyan and Bonamy came down from the mountains now, tempted by the
offered rewards. They saw the huge tracks; they learned that cattle
were not killed in all places at once. They studied and hunted. They
got at length in the dust the full impressions of the feet of the
various monsters in regions wide apart, and they saw that all the
cattle were killed in the same way--their muzzles torn, their necks
broken; and last, the marks on the trees where the Bears had reared
and rubbed, then scored them with a broken tusk, the same all through
the wide range; and Kellyan told them with calm certainty: "Pedro's
Gringo, Old Pegtrack, the Placerville Grizzly, and the Monarch of the
Range _are one and the same Bear."_

The little man from the mountains and the big man from the hills s