Deerfoot on the Prairies

by Edward Sylvester Ellis

“But couldn’t he turn and make off in another direction and get beyond reach before you could load again? I tell you, George, there was science in what I did. I advise you to try the same trick when you have a chance, and then”——

A peculiar hog-like grunt caused both to look behind them. The sight that met their gaze was enough to terrify a veteran hunter. Hardly a hundred feet away stood the most gigantic grizzly bear of which they had ever dreamed. They had listened spellbound to the story of Mul-tal-la, but believed that the panic he underwent at the time of his encounter with one of those western terrors caused him to exaggerate his account, though it must have been a fearful brute that could have wrought the havoc he did.

A Western Monarch.

This bear had his hind feet on the ground and his front ones on a boulder, so that his massive back sloped downward from his head, and he was looking at the boys as if speculating as to what species they belonged. His size was tremendous. To the lads he seemed to be three or four times the bulk of any of his kind they had met in the forests of Ohio or Kentucky. It is not improbable that the estimate of the brothers was right. You know that the grizzly bear (which the early explorers referred to as a white bear) is now, as he has been from time immemorial, the monarch of the western wilds. So prodigious are his size and strength that he is absolutely without fear.

And he is justified in this self-confidence. One stroke of that mighty paw, whose claws are often six inches in length, will break the back of a horse or tear a man to shreds, and enveloping his victim in those beam-like front legs, he will crush him to pulp without putting forth more than a tithe of his power. A score of bullets have been pumped into that immense carcass without causing any apparent harm. The Rocky Mountain grizzly saves the hunter the trouble of attacking him. It is the bear himself who starts things moving and keeps them going at a lively rate. The advice of the most experienced ranger of the wilds is that if a man is alone and without an inaccessible perch from which to shoot, he should not disturb the grizzly. This advice is equally good for two persons, and would not be inappropriate for three in most circumstances.

It may be doubted whether the entire West at the time of which I am writing contained a more colossal grizzly bear than the one upon which George and Victor Shelton gazed when they turned their heads. His bulk was so immense that they recognized him on the instant as the dreaded brute of which they had heard more than one terrifying story.

Why he did not advance upon the lads at once is not easy to explain. It probably was because the whim did not come to him, or he may have looked upon the couple as too insignificant for notice. It is not unlikely that curiosity had something to do with it, for no doubt they were the first examples of the Caucasian race that he had seen, though he must have met Indians and may have crushed an indefinite number to death.

The strange spectacle was presented for the next few minutes of the boys staring at the monster, while he stared back at them, no one moving or making any sound. George and Victor were literally paralyzed for the time and unable to stir or speak.

Victor was the first to rally. Forgetting the warnings of Deerfoot and Mul-tal-la, he sprang to his feet, faced wholly around, and brought his gun to his shoulder.