They found the bear quite dead and with only two bullet holes in his hide. The first one showed that Jack's first shot had been a bad one; he had fired at the point of the bear's shoulder, but had hit it in the top of the head, just grazing the skull. There was nothing to show where the second shot had gone, but the third one had pierced his chest and had gone lengthwise through his body.
"There," said Hugh, "you see what I told you; that first shot gave him a rap on the head and sort o' stunned and dazed him, and I don't believe he knew which way he was running. I suppose you'd like to take off his hide, because he's the first bear you've ever killed, but it ain't in very good order. You see, he's partly shed off, and what's left of his old winter coat is all sunburned. Still, we may as well skin him. You can use the hide for a while, and then, if you like you can cut off his front paws, just to keep the long claws. You see, he's a little fellow, just about the size of the one your uncle killed that day we came out from town."
Jack helped to skin the bear, and found that it was hard, slow work.
"Yes," said Hugh, to whom he spoke of this, "skinning a bear is some like skinning a beaver; you can't strip the hide at all, you've got to cut every inch."
After the hide had been removed they carried it up to the trail and made a bundle of it, and then, going down to the brook, washed the blood from their hands, and Hugh sat down and smoked. As they sat there Jack noticed two or three birds fly down toward where the bear lay, and then two or three more. He asked Hugh what these were, but Hugh had not seen them. He proposed that they should go up to the trail where the bear-skin lay, and from which they could see the carcass and the birds that visited it. They climbed the bank and were hardly seated on the trail when a small grey bird pitched down out of a pine tree on to the carcass, and began to peck at the meat. It was at once followed by two or three others.
"Now, those birds," said Hugh, "are what I call meat hawks; some calls them camp robbers. I expect they're a kind of a winter bird, anyhow there's lots of them 'round in winter; they're the tamest creatures you ever see. I've seen it sometimes when I was skinning a deer, hung up, that they'd 'light on the legs of the deer and peck at the meat, and sometimes they'd flutter right down to the ground at my feet and eat the scraps that fell from my knife. They're dreadful easy caught, too, if anybody was to take the trouble, and when you catch 'em they don't seem a mite scared, but just peck and fight and claw you as if they were as big as you are. There, that one," he continued, as a large dark brown bird with a beautiful long crest flew down to the carcass, "is a kind of a blue jay, I reckon. Anyway, he looks some like the blue jays I used to see back in the States when I was a boy, except that he's kind of brownish blue instead of being light blue. Those camp robbers are afraid of him, and they leave until he gets through, but if a magpie comes along, then the blue jay leaves, and of course if a raven or an eagle comes, the magpie has to do the waiting." Just as he spoke, a queer, chippering noise was heard in one of the pines, and two beautiful magpies, with glossy black heads and tails and white under parts, came to the ground, and after hopping gracefully about for a moment or two, began to feed on the carcass.
"Well," said Hugh, "we might stop here all day, watching these birds, but we'd better be moving. We'll go back to the horses another way, and, as I've got to pack this bear hide, you'll have to kill an elk, if we see any."
Their way back was through beautiful green timber, free from underbrush, the ground being covered with a soft black mould of decaying pine needles. They had been walking briskly for some little time, and Jack thought they must be getting near the horses, when suddenly Hugh stopped and said; "Son, look around you and see whether you see anything."
Jack thought there must be something special to see, and looked carefully about. He could see only the green pines, their grey trunks, and the black earth, sometimes brightened by shafts of sunlight which came through openings in the green canopy above them. After a minute he said, "No, Hugh, I don't see anything."
"Well," said Hugh, "there's something to see, and I expect it's something that you never saw before. Let's go on a little way."