The night in the roundhouse was always a special time, after the Bear Dance was over and most of the visitors had left. Then many of the remaining people would get together around the fire, beneath the smoke hole, to tell stories, sing songs, and talk about the Bear Dance. Leonard and Marvin were there, along with Vinnie, Chris, Robin, Rod Beckman, Big Waters and Sally, and some of their people.

First they talked about the whirlwind.

"What do you think about that thing?" asked Chris.

"That was the spirit of some ancestor visiting," said Marvin.

"Maybe it was the Professor paying us a visit," said Vinnie.

"It was the Big Man," said somebody else.

"The Great Spirit," said Leonard, "the great spirit of this place."

They also talked about the handgame, and Robin’s incredible run of luck.

"Luck comes to you when it likes you," Leonard said, looking at Robin curiously. "You've found some luck. Some people never find it. Others don’t know how to handle it when they do find it. You must be careful with your luck."

After a moment he continued. "One fellow found some gambling luck up on Red Mountain. He tried to dig it up with a stick, but halfway down the root broke. He knew this meant he would lose at handgame whenever he gambled. He got mad, and yanked the root up and threw it on the ground, cursing.

"On the way back to camp he got sick. Luckily, Bald Rock Jim happened into camp and realized what had happened. He didn’t think he could save the fellow, but he tried. He doctored him, sucked and sucked, and finally he sucked up this root, the size of a turnip that had already begun to sprout. Another five minutes and that fellow would have been a goner."

They talked some more about gambling and gambling luck.

"You know how a fellow knows if he’s gonna win or lose at handgame?" Leonard asked Chris.

"How?"

"He finds some yellow-hammer feathers. The night before he’s gonna gamble, he ties the feathers together to a little rock and puts them  in a gentle current in the stream, so they’re standing upright, anchored to the stone. If they’re still standing up in the morning, he’s gonna win. If they’re lying flat, he’s gonna lose."

"What if they’re all washed away?" Chris asked.

"Then he better not play at all!" Marv laughed.
 
 

Eventually the conversation turned to Big Bob and the grizzly men.

"Do you really think Big Bob was a modern-day grizzly-man?" Chris asked Vinnie, or anybody else around. Chris was almost convinced, but he wanted some confirmation.

"It all adds up," Vinnie said. "I keep wondering about that Bald Rock dance. Why did he say it never happened? And why else would he have kept that bear hide?"

"What bear hide?" Leoanard interjected.

"The cops found an old bear hide in a fruit cellar underneath Big Bob’s cabin," Chris explained, "a bear-man outfit, rigged to be worn by a man."

"A grizzly hide?" Leonard asked.

"The cop didn’t know. It was old and big and brown, though."

"Where is it now?" Leonard seemed somewhat agitated as he questioned Chris.

"The cops still have it, I imagine," Chris said.

"We’ve got to get that hide. We’ve got to calm it down, hold another bear dance and put it back to sleep, before it kills again."

Marv studied Leonard intently.

Vinnie paused a moment, then continued. "They must chase the deer there, don’t you think? I mean, in our deer dance we use our bows and hunt the deer as we dance around. I was thinking, they probably chase the deer around in their dance, like they used to do on Bald Rock."

Rod Beckman said, "Better watch out Vinnie, keep wearing that hide and you might turn into a bear-man yourself!" Beckman laughed, but nobody joined him.

"No," Leonard said, "the bear-dancer becomes the Bear when he puts that hide on, it’s the bear dancing in that circle. But maidum pano hides himself in the grizzly hide, he doesn’t become a bear. He kills for his own motives, and hides behind the grizzly skin. He’s still a man."

"Maybe in the old days the maidum pano sometimes did wear the hide at the Bear Dance," Vinnie speculated. "Maybe the people soothed him, and all the man-killers, like they sooth the spirit of the bear and the rattlesnake."

"No," Leonard disagreed. "the bear-dancer is a holy man, he is on a path. A maidum pano is a man-killer, on a different path, the path of a warrior."

"But that’s what the Bear Dance is all about, isn’t it? Soothing the spirit of the beast," Chris asked.

"Ye wenai!" Marvin agreed.

"So if Big Bob were on the path of the warrior, what do you think really happened to him?" Chris asked anybody.

"Well, that’s obvious, from what you’ve told me," Marv said seriously. "The bear hide got him."

Marv paused before explaining. "Remember that time there was that split over who was going to run the Yosemite Bear Dance? When Chico Pete took the bear hide out of the shed where it slept, and stuffed it into his car trunk to take it back to Sacramento? Everybody told him not to do it. Maybe that was before your time. He got killed in a car wreck before he made it home! Then his brother stored that hide in his garage. He soon lost his job and his wife left him. They wanted me to bring that thing back to the shed where it belonged. 'No way!' I said. They finally had to get a Miwok doctor to come to Sacramento, to calm down the bear and put the hide back to sleep. You’re asking for trouble if you don’t know how to take care of the sacred hide."

"Maybe Worldmaker killed maidum pano, to make the world a safer place for people," Vinnie volunteered.

"Worldmaker sleeps now," said old Leonard curiously. "The People have to take care of some things themselves."

Somebody started singing,

but the words soon blended into English with the same haunting sound.

The conversation eventually turned away from man-killers and Big Bob, and everybody lightened up. Marv told many long stories and jokes, and Vinnie too felt light-hearted and in good spirits. He had worn the bear hide in the dance, but now he had turned back into one of the guys again. They all talked, and shared stories and songs around the fire in the roundhouse.

Vinnie started singing a soft haunting dance song.

"Well, what are you going to do now?" Marvin finally asked Chris.

The question didn’t register with Chris. He was wondering what he was going to do with Robin. "What do you mean?" Chris asked.

"With your life. What are you going to do with you life? Now that you don’t have a job any more."

"Oh, I’m going to play some handgames, and then I’m going sailing," Chris gave his stock reply.

"That sounds like a good idea. Need some company? On the handgames, that is. I’ve got a couple weeks off."

"That depends on whether Robin comes with me," Chris answered half-jokingly.

"Well, I wouldn’t be offering to come gamble with you if Robin weren’t coming along with us," Marv laughed, patting Robin's leg. "You don’t think I want to travel just with you, do you?"

"I thought you probably had an ulterior motive there, Marv," Chris smiled.

"Let’s just say I know where the Luck is now," Marv laughed again, winking at Robin.

"Seriously," Marv continued. "There’s some big handgames coming up. We could do pretty well. Next week there’s Yosemite, but there’s also another big-time at Schurz over in Nevada ­ probably more gamblers over there at Schurz. Then there’s action in eastern Nevada over at Duckwater, and then the big tournament over at Cedar City, Utah. There’s a five-thousand dollar pot at Cedar City, I hear."

"Five thousand bucks?" Chris asked, his eyes widening.

"Right, five thousand bucks. Double-elimination tournament. Twenty-five hundred for first place, fifteen hundred for second and a grand for third. The entry fee’s a hundred bucks a team. With Robin’s luck it should be easy pickings."

"What do you think, Robin?" Chris asked.

"I’m ready for more!," Robin beamed. "You’ve got me hooked now, but I don’t know how long this luck will last!"

"Okay, I’m game," Chris said. "We can hit Schurz, and then check out Spencer’s Hot Spring on the way over to Duckwater and Cedar City. Let’s hit the handgame highway!"

"All right!" chimed Marv.
 
 

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