Dwarf pines not big enough to be Christmas
trees, grew thinly among loose stone and gravel scaurs. Here and
there a big boulder sat quiescent on a knoll, having paused there
till the next rain in his long slide down the mountain. There was
here no ambuscade for the snakes, you could see clearly where you
trod; and yet the higher I went, the more abject and appealing
became Chuchu's terror. He was an excellent master of that
composite language in which dogs communicate with men, and he would
assure me, on his honour, that there was some peril on the
mountain; appeal to me, by all that I held holy, to turn back; and
at length, finding all was in vain, and that I still persisted,
ignorantly foolhardy, he would suddenly whip round and make a bee-
line down the slope for Silverado, the gravel showering after him.
What was he afraid of? There were admittedly brown bears and
California lions on the mountain; and a grizzly visited Rufe's
poultry yard not long before, to the unspeakable alarm of Caliban,
who dashed out to chastise the intruder, and found himself, by
moonlight, face to face with such a tartar. Something at least
there must have been: some hairy, dangerous brute lodged
permanently among the rocks a little to the north-west of
Silverado, spending his summer thereabout, with wife and family.
And there was, or there had been, another animal.
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