'Can't say for certain,' replied that now experienced hunter, 'but I expect there are some of all sorts about. You see the river is full of salmon, which have run up to spawn, and the bears are down here for the fishing season.'
Leaving the river, Snap and his friend crossed two or three deep dingles, or, as they would call them in America, little canyons, and in half an hour's time were creeping very cautiously along the brow of a ridge through the big trees, on which the light of the sun gleamed redly. That sun was now low in the skies, and every moment Snap expected to catch sight of a stately stag tossing his head and leading his hinds in single file from the timber to the feeding-grounds.
'Halloo,' whispered he, suddenly holding up his hand as a sign for silence to Towzer, 'what is the matter with the robber-birds?'
Towzer listened. A lot of birds just over the ridge were chattering noisily, like jays in an English covert when the beaters are coming through. Snap signed to the boy to follow, and both crept cautiously to the top of the ridge.
On the very top was a kind of table-land, and, looking through the trees with their backs to the sun, neither of our friends could see anything. Creeping back again, Snap ran along the hill and came up to the top of the ridge again in such a position as to have the noisy jays between himself and the sinking sun. For a moment he could still see nothing. Then a stick cracked under his companion's foot, and the quick movement of a dark mass in amongst the pines caught and arrested his attention. He had never seen a grizzly before, but he needed no one to tell him what the great brute was before him, with its whole body on the alert to detect the source of the sound it had heard.
The sun threw a red glow on the scene, which looked like blood about the body of the deer on which the grizzly was feeding. The brute had his claws on his victim's shoulder, from which he was tearing strips of flesh as he lay muttering and growling by its side. As the twig cracked he rose and sat looking over his shoulder in the direction from which the sound came.
Snap remembered old Wharton's words as he looked at the bear: 'Thet's about his favourite position when he once glimpses you, and don't know whether to come or go; but don't you shoot then, there's nothing to hit but his jaw or his shoulder, and you won't kill him quick enough to be safe that way.' Remembering these words, Snap kept his hand off his rifle and waited until the bear should give him a better chance; but before this happened there was a report, which deafened our hero, right by his ear; the bear spun round with a roar, and then stood tearing at the ground and tossing the earth in the air in a paroxysm of rage.
Snap hardly dared to breathe, but if his words were inaudible his lips seemed to say to the reckless youngster beside him, 'Keep still for your life, he may not see you.'
Neither of the boys was well hidden—in fact, Snap was not hidden at all; but by remaining rigid, as if he was cut out of stone, the short-sighted beast did not distinguish him from the pines around him. Luckily, too, he did not notice the smoke curling from Towzer's rifle.
To the boys the bear was plain enough with his back to the sunlight; but they themselves were in shadow.