Along toward the noon hour I topped a ridge and decided I would halt and eat at the first spring or brook I came to. My horse, an old campaigner in wilderness work, pricked his ears as we began dipping down the gentle slope. I studied the path ahead and the timbered slopes on both sides to discover the cause of this attention.
The animal was intelligent. I knew it could be no wild creature as there was no suggestion of fear in the attentive ears. Dissatisfied at remaining in ignorance, I reined in to investigate more carefully. Almost at once the horse swung his head to the right and gazed curiously. On this side the space was bordered by a beech grove. Owing to the rank bush-growth lining the path, little could be seen of the grove from any point below where I had halted until a brook, which cut the path, was reached.
I leaned forward and looked between the horse’s ears and discovered a bear down in the hollow, nosing about for nuts and grubs on the bank of the brook. A bear was always acceptable meat to a settler, and I at once decided to stalk the brute and pack his carcass to the Grisdol cabin.
After the first moment he passed behind some trees, but as I continued to glimpse him I knew he had not taken alarm. I slid from my horse and started him down the trace, and then ducked into the grove and rapidly descended toward the brook. I had no fear of my horse losing himself, as he would make for the stream where I would join him within a few minutes.
As I flitted from tree to tree I repeatedly sighted the animal as he poked his nose about in search of ants or grubs, and yet when I reached a point within sixty or seventy-five yards of where he should have been feeding I could not locate him.
A half-formed suspicion popped into my mind from nowhere. My horse had shown no nervousness in drawing nearer to the bear. The bushes prevented my seeing the horse, but I could hear him as he quickened his pace to reach the tumbling brook. Now for a second I saw the bear again, and my suspicion grew stronger.
The brute impressed me as being very lean, whereas the season was enough advanced to have grown some fat on his bones. I was fairly startled next to behold the creature emerge from behind a tree and walk upright toward the opening made by the brook, cutting across the trace. Had I not been partly primed for the surprise I should have been astounded at my second discovery; the bear was armed with a gun.
Expecting to behold me on the horse when the animal reached the brook the fellow’s only thought was to remain unseen by any one in the trace. He halted behind a tree, but in full view of me, and standing with his left side exposed to me. Had I the instincts of a killer I would have shot him forthwith, and as he was obviously stalking me, having discovered I was traveling over the trace, I would have been justified. As it was I whistled shrilly.
Like a flash the bearskin fell back and a painted Shawnee wheeled to face me. Even as he turned his smoothbore banged away and half a dozen buckshot rained through the branches over my head. He was slipping behind the tree when I fired.
He went down with a foot and part of his leg exposed. Controlling an impulse to close in I reloaded, taking great care in wrapping the greased patch about the bullet. I believed I had done for him, but to make sure I sent another pellet through the exposed foot. It twitched, as a dead limb will, but without muscular reaction. Reloading, and circling warily to avoid being taken by surprise by any companion, I reached the beech. My first shot had caught him through the base of the neck, killing instantly.