"You may get a bit cold before morning," Simon went on, "but you're warmly dressed, and a little frost won't hurt you. And I've got the place all picked out for you. And we're even going to move something that's laying there so it will be more pleasant." Again he paused. Bruce looked up. "The thing that's lying there is a dead yearling calf, half ate up. It was killed last night by the Killer--the old grizzly that maybe you've heard of before. Some of the boys were going to wait in trees to-night by the carcass and shoot the Killer when he comes back after another meal--something that likely won't happen until about midnight if he runs true to form. But it won't be necessary now. We're going to haul the carcass away--down wind where he won't smell it. And we're going to leave you there in its place to explain to him what became of it." Bruce felt their glowing eyes upon him. Exultation was creeping over the clan; once more their leader had done himself proud. It was such suggestions as this that kept them in awe of him. And they thought they understood. They supposed that the night would be of the utter depths of terror to the tenderfoot from the cities, that the bear would sniff and wander about him, and perchance the man's hair would be turned quite white by morning. But being mountain men, they thought that the actual danger of attack was not great. They supposed that the inborn fear of men that all animals possess would keep him at a distance. And, if by any unlikely chance the theft of the beef-carcass should throw him into such a rage that he would charge Bruce, no harm in particular would be done. The man was a Folger, an enemy of the clan, and after once the telltale ropes were removed, no one would ask questions about the mutilated, broken thing that would be found next morning in the pasture. The story would carry down to the settlements merely as a fresh atrocity of the Killer, the last and greatest of the grizzlies. But they had no realization of the full dreadfulness of the plan. They hadn't heard the more recent history of the Killer,--the facts that Simon had just learned from Dave. Strange and dark conjecturing occupied Simon's mind, and he knew--in a moment's thought--that something more than terror and indignity might be Bruce's fate. But his passion was ripe for what might come. The few significant facts that they did not know were merely that the Killer had already found men out, that he had learned in an instant's meeting with Hudson beside Little River that men were no longer to be feared, and worse, that he was raving and deadly from the pain of the wound that Bruce's bullet had inflicted. The circle of faces faded out for both of them as the eyes of Bruce and Simon met and clashed and battled in the silent room. XXIII "If Simon Turner isn't a coward," Bruce said slowly to the clan, "he will give me a chance to fight him now."