The Snowshoe Trail

by Edison Marshall

The bullet went straight home, ripping through the lungs, tearing the great arteries about the heart, shivering even a portion of the heart itself. And yet the grizzly sprang like a demon through the deep snow, straight towards him.

It is no easy thing to face a grizzly's charge. The teeth gleam in red foam, the eyes flash, the great shoulders rock. For all the deep snow that he bounded through, the beast approached at an unbelievable pace. He bawled as he came—awful, reverberating sounds that froze the blood in the veins. If the course had been open, likely he would have been upon him before Bill could send home another shot. There could only be one result to such a meeting as this. One blow would strike the life from Bill's body as the lightning strikes it from a tree. But the snow impeded the bear, and it seemed to Virginia's horrified eyes that Bill would have time to empty the magazine. She saw his fingers race as he worked the lever action of the gun: she saw his eyes lower again to the sights. The bear seemed almost upon him. And she screamed when she heard the impotent click of the hammer against the breech. Bill had fires the single shot that was in the gun.

Before ever he heard the sound Harold remembered. In one wave of horror he recalled that he had forgotten to refill the magazine with shells. Yet leaping fast—red and deadly and terrible upon the heels of his remorse—there came an emotion that seared him like a wall of fire. He saw Bill's fate. By no circumstance of which he could conceive could the man escape. A shudder passed over his frame, but it was not of revulsion. Rather it was an emotion known well to the beasts of prey, though to human beings it comes but rarely. Here was his enemy, the man he hated above all living creatures, and the blood lust surged through him like a madness. In one wave of ecstasy he felt that he was about to see the gratification of his hatred.

In the hands of a brave and loyal man, the rifle Harold carried might yet have been Bill's salvation. It was a large-caliber, close-range gun of stupendous striking power. Yet Harold didn't lift it to his shoulder. Part of it was willful omission, mostly it was the paralysis of terror. Yet he would have need enough for the gun if the bear turned on him. He saw that Bill's had was groping, hopeless though the effort was, for one of the shells that Harold had given him and which he carried in his pocket.

But there was no time to find it, to open his gun and insert it, and to fire before the ravening enemy would be upon him. He made the effort simply because it was his creed: to struggle as long as his life blood pulsed in his veins. He knew there was no chance to run or dodge. The bear could go at thrice his own pace in the deep snow. His last hope had been that Harold would come to his aid: that the man would stop the bear's charge with Bill's own heavy rifle; but now he knew that Harold's enmity of cowardice had betrayed him.

But at that instant aid came from an unexpected quarter. Virginia was not one to stand helpless or to turn and flee. She remembered the pistol at her belt, and she drew it in a flash of blue steel. True and straight she aimed toward the glowing eyes of the grizzly.

At the angle that they struck, her bullets did not penetrate the brain, but they did give Bill an instant's reprieve. The bear struck at the wounds they made, then halted, bawling, in the snow. His roving eye caught sight of Virginia's form. With a roar he bounded toward her.

The next instant was one of drama, of incredible stress and movement. For all his mortal wounds, the short distance between the bear and the girl seemed to recede with tragic swiftness. The animal's cries rang through the silent forest: near and far the wild creatures paused in their occupations to listen. Virginia also stood her ground. There was no use to flee; she merely stood straight, her eyes gazing along her pistol barrel, firing shot after shot into the animal's head. Because it was an automatic, she was able to send home the loads in rapid succession.

But they were little, futile things, with never the shocking power to stop that blasting charge. Her safety still lay in that in which she had always trusted, the same that had been her fort and her stronghold in all their past adventures. Bill saw the grizzly change in direction; his response was instinctive and instantaneous. He came leaping through the snow as if a great hand had hurled him, all of his muscles contracting in response to the swift, immutable command of his will. For all the burden of his snowshoes and the depths of the drifts, his leap was almost as fast as the grizzly's own. He had but one realization: that the girl's tender flesh must never know those rending claws and fangs. He leaped to intercept the rending charge with his own body.

But his hand had found the shell by now, dropped it into the gun, and as a last instinctive effort, pulled back the lever that slid the cartridge into the barrel. There was no time to raise the gun to his shoulder. He pointed it instinctively toward the gray throat. And the end of the barrel was against the bear's flesh as he pressed the trigger.