“Black-tailed deer,” I said softly, with my eyes glued on the thicket.
“Well, tenderfoot, here’s the trail of that tha’ deer, and he hain’t been gone by here mor’n nor a week ago, nuther.”
I looked and there in the soft mud was the print of a foot, a human-looking foot, but for the evenness in the length of the toes and the sharpness and length of the toe nails. Yes, there was another difference, and that was the size. It was the footprint of a savage Hercules, the track of an enormous grizzly bear, and the soft mud that had dripped from the big foot was still undried on the leaves and grass when Pete pointed it out to me.
“Well, Pete, don’t forget your promise that I am to have first shot at all big game,” I whispered with my best effort at coolness, but my heart was thumping against my ribs at a terrific rate.
“But—why, bless you old man!” I whispered excitedly as I looked at my gun, “I am armed only with a shotgun.”
“Tha’s all right,” replied the big trapper complacently; then, with a quick motion, he whipped out his keen-edged knife and snatching one of my cartridges he severed the shell neatly between the two wads which separated the powder and shot; that is, a wad in each piece of the cartridge was exposed by the cut.
Guided by the faint longitudinal seam where the edges of the colored paper join on the shell, Big Pete carefully fitted the two parts of the cartridge together exactly as they were before being cut apart. Breaking my gun, he slipped the mutilated ammunition into the unchoked barrel.
“Tha’,” he grunted, “tha’s better than a bullet at short range, an’ll tar a hole in old Ephraim big enough to put your arm through.”
He cut two more in the same manner, saying, “Be darned kerful not to get excited and put them in your choke barl, or tha’ may be trouble.”
Hunting a grizzly with a shotgun and bird shot was not my idea of safe sport, but I was too much of a moral coward to acknowledge to Pete that I was frightened. Pete examined his gun, ran his finger over the cartridges in his belt, and went through all the familiar motions which to him were unconscious but always foretold danger ahead.