“I’ll draw bead on him from here,” said Joe, stopping short. “Get ready to fire, lad, if he turns. It’ll take lots o’ lead to finish that fellow.”
Twice Joe’s rifle spoke again. One shot took effect. There was a fearful growl from the beast, but it was not yet mortally wounded.
Maddened and desperate, it wheeled about, and came straight for its pursuers. Again the guide fired. Still the bear advanced, gnashing its teeth and mumbling horribly; Neal saw its black shape not thirty yards from him.
“Shoot! shoot, boy!” screamed Joe. “Or give me your rifle. I haven’t got a charge left!”
For half a minute Farrar shook all over as with ague. His nostrils felt choked. His mouth was wide open in his efforts to breathe. His heart pounded like a sledge-hammer. With that mumbling brute advancing upon him, he felt as if he couldn’t fire so as to hit a haystack or a flock of hens at a barn-door.
Then, suddenly, he was cool again, seeing and hearing with extraordinary clearness. The ignominious alternative of giving his rifle to Joe produced a revulsion. His fingers were on the trigger, his left hand firmly gripped the barrel of his Winchester; he brought it to his shoulder.
“Aim low! Try to hit him in the front of the neck where it joins the body,” said Joe, in tones sharp as a razor, which cut his meaning into Neal’s brain.
Bruin was only fifteen yards away when Farrar’s rifle cracked once—twice—sending out its messengers of death.
There was a last terrible growl, a plunge, and a thud which seemed to shake the ground under Neal’s feet. As the smoke of his shots cleared away, Joe beheld him leaning on his rifle, with a face which in the moonlight looked white as chalk, and the bear lying where it had fallen headlong towards him. It made a desperate struggle to regain its feet, then rolled on its side, dead.
One bullet had pierced the spot which Joe mentioned, and had passed through the region of the heart.