"Suppose she went out the other way! Suppose she climbed some other part of the fence. Suppose—
"Ha! Here she is."
Doby pulled the trigger. The gun roared. The bear roared.
Flames sparkled round him. The gun's recoil kicked him end over end. Banged and battered, and rubbing his shoulder, he lay and blinked. If the safe end of the gun had done this to him, what might not its full cannon force have done to the bear?
He was quite prepared for the scene which was before him as he crawled shakily to the window and ventured a look below. The bear lay stretched out on a huddle of rails and corn.
"Of course she's dead." Doby breathed deep. "I know she must be. But—I guess I'll stay up here 'til pa comes. It won't be long before the folks who heard that gun will get here in a flock." He took another peep and another breath. "That is a big bear. Her pelt is almost prime now in the last of August." He got out his knife and examined its edge. A knife must be in perfect trim to skin a bear.
Then an entirely new suspicion dismayed the boy.
"The pelt of a community bear can't belong to any one person. Nearly a thousand people will each have a small share in it. Father George Rapp, the church and state, will direct Frederick Rapp, the business manager, to sell the pelt. Then we will all have an equal interest in the money after it is in the bank."
In the midst of its successes, the Rapp colony finally failed, as did Owen's socialistic colony after it. Both dwindled away after the strong leaders were gone. Both were forsaken, as all others like them have been, and always for much the same reason as Doby gave, when all by himself in the darkness the honest human nature in his soul said to the listening walls in a burst of indignation: "I am the person who killed the bear. I am the one who ought to have the pelt to do with as I please. I want my own things! Be sensible and sell the fur for money? Put the money in the bank? Own one and nine one hundred and seventy-eighth part of the proceeds? No! I'd like to have the pelt to sit on and to look at and to tell hunters about!"