He had not heard or seen me, but had winded me, and tarried not for better acquaintance. I followed his trail some three miles up the cañon, carefully penetrating the thickets and peering among the larger trees, but never a glimpse could I get and never a sound could I hear of him. He seemed unusually wild. I could see by his trail that he had not stopped, but had kept straight away on that long, swinging trot that is such a telling gait of the species, and which they will sometimes keep up for hours together. Finally I came to where he had left the cañon and ascended the mountain. I followed up this for a time, but seeing that he had not yet paused, and finding that my famished condition rendered me unequal to the climb, was compelled to abandon the pursuit and with a heavy heart return again to the cañon. I kept on up it, but could find no other game or sign of any. Like the red hunter, in the time of famine, who
"Vainly walked through the forest,
Sought for bird, or beast, and found none;
Saw no track of deer or rabbit,
In the snow beheld no foot-prints,
In the ghostly gleaming forest
Fell and could not rise from weakness,"
so I trudged on until, wearied and worn out, I lay down beside a giant fir tree, whose spreading branches had kept the snow from the ground, and fell asleep. When I awoke my joints were stiff and sore, and I was chilled to the bone. It was late in the afternoon, and a quiet, drizzling rain had set in.
I found the trail that led through the cañon, and started back to camp, trudging along as rapidly as possible, for hunger was gnawing at my vitals and my strength was fast failing.
"Over snow-fields waste and pathless,
Under snow-encumbered branches,
Empty-handed, heavy-hearted,"
I toiled wearily on. The snow had become saturated with the rain, and great chunks of it were falling from the trees with dull, monotonous sounds. "Slush, slush," "Splash, splash," came the gloomy sounds from all parts of the woods. I was nearing camp, and had abandoned all hope of seeing game. My only object was to reach shelter, to rest, and feast on the unsatisfying bread. I heard a succession of the splashings that came from my left with such regular cadence as to cause me to look up, when, great St. Hubert! there came a huge grizzly bear shambling and splashing along through the wet snow. It was his footsteps that I had been hearing for a minute or two past, and which I had, at first, thought to be the falling snow.
He had not yet seen me, and what a marvelous change came over me! I forgot that I was tired; that I was weak; that I was hungry. The instincts of the hunter reanimated me, and I thought only of killing the grand game before me. I threw down my rifle, raising the hammer as the weapon came into position, and the click of the lock reached his ear. It was the first intimation he had of possible danger, and he stopped and threw up his head to look and listen. My thoughts came and went like flashes of lightning. I remembered then the famishing condition of myself and friends. Here was meat, and I must save it. There must be no nervousness—no wild shooting now. This shot must tell. And there was not a tremor in all my system. Every nerve was as of steel for the instant. The little gold bead on the muzzle of the rifle instantly found the vital spot behind the bear's shoulder, gleamed through the rear sight like a spark of fire, and before he had time to realize what the strange apparition was that had so suddenly confronted him, the voice of the Winchester was echoing through the cañon and an express bullet had crashed through his vitals.
The shock was so sudden and the effect on him so deadly that he apparently thought nothing of fight, but only of seeking a place to die in peace.
He wheeled and shot into a neighboring thicket with the speed of an arrow. I fired at him again as he disappeared. He crashed through the jungle out into the open woods, turned to the right and went across a ridge as if Satan himself were after him. As the big gray mass shot through a clear space between two trees I gave him another speeder, and then he disappeared beyond a ridge.
The snow had melted rapidly and the ground was bare in places, so that I had some trouble in trailing the bear, but wherever he crossed a patch of snow his trail was bespattered with blood. I followed over the ridge and through scattering jack pines, about two hundred yards, and found him lying dead near the trail. My first and third bullets had gone in behind his shoulder only an inch apart. The first had passed clear through him, and the other had lodged against the skin on the opposite side. Several ribs were broken on either side, and his lungs and other portions of his interior were ground into sausage; yet so great was his vitality and tenacity to life that he was able to make this distance at a speed that would have taxed the best horse in the country, and if he had seen fit to attack me instead of running away he would probably have made sausage of me.