As he spoke, the old hunter pointed upward to the top of a cliff, full five hundred feet above them, and several hundred yards distant. There, in full relief against the blue sky, stood the beast, his ungainly body so strangely striped and ringed, and its appearance so singular as to be almost indescribable. For a minute the three men looked at it in silence, and then Teddy O’Doherty removed his coonskin cap and made a low obeisance. “What’s that for?” asked Black Tom. “I s’lute him, jist as the gintry in Tipperary used to s’lute me when they saw me ridin’ by on me own jackass, that belonged to another man. The baast is a gintleman, so long as he uses me in the shtyle of last night.” “You’d better keep cl’ar of him, so long as you can.” “I shan’t bother him, nor persoom too much on his good nature.” “’Sh! thar he goes.” From his high elevation came the faint sound of his peculiar bark, and then the brute turned about, and was immediately lost to view. “Thar’s no tellin’ whar he’ll next turn up,” said Stebbins, as the three moved forward again. “No; and I don’t believe when we meet him again, that we’ll get off so easy as before,” replied Black Tom. The gold-hunters were now in a sort of deep cañon or rent in the mountain, through which ran a small stream of icy-clear water. It was this same rivulet that had displayed the golden particles to old Stebbins, but it was at a point higher up, before it entered into this wild region, and it was now the intention of the three to follow up the stream for a considerable distance, searching it carefully for the same precious metal that had drawn them hither. In prospecting thus, it was evident that it was necessary to keep a good look-out; and, as Teddy manifested such an appreciation of the nameless brute, that task was deputized to him, while the others were to scrutinize the bed of the small stream for what had caused them to halt in this place. For several hours the party made their way up the tiny brook without discovering the first indications of gold; yet, they were not discouraged by the fact, for they knew there was plenty of it in the neighborhood. They had almost reached the spot where they had seen it a few months before, when Stebbins, who was slightly in advance halted, and snuffed the air with the manner of one who scented something suspicious. “What is it?” asked Black Tom, failing to understand what it meant. “We’re near something dead--hello!” As he spoke, the old hunter pointed to a clump of bushes that surmounted a mass of rocks and gravel, seemingly without any soil to give them existence. From it a huge bird, gorged almost to bursting, laboriously rose a few feet in the air, and floated sluggishly down the cañon, a hundred yards or so, when it landed upon a cliff, at a moderate elevation, and then stepped heavily around, so as to face and watch the men that had disturbed him. “That’s whar it is,” said Tom, looking toward the bushes.