“On my riding up to about twenty yards’ distance, ‘Old Ephraim’ raised himself on his hind legs, and cocked his head knowingly on one side, as if he were going to make a rush. Whilst he was in this attitude, his brawny chest being fully exposed, I gave him the contents of both barrels almost simultaneously, which rolled him over on his back, where he made several convulsive movements with his paws.... Dismounting, I took my second gun from Pierre, and gave him the coup de gràce behind the ear, when, with a peculiarly melancholy, whining moan, he stretched out his great limbs and breathed his last.”
The boy, though wounded, was feigning death and escaped, but it must be admitted that the ruse was tried under exceptionally favorable circumstances. “Many and many a spirit-stirring yarn,” says Leveson, “have I heard related by hunters, around the watch-fire, of their encounters with the much-dreaded grizzly.” Bear stories are greatly alike, he adds, and concludes his description by saying, in much the same way as Colonel Dodge (“The Black Hills”), “from my own experience, I should always give ‘Old Ephraim’ a wide berth if I were not armed with a thoroughly serviceable breech-loading rifle throwing a large ball.”
The annals of hunting preserve the name of no greater or more adventurous sportsman than he who gives this opinion. It is one which every one who has encountered the grizzly bear will agree to, and it might also have been arrived at from studying the literature of this subject alone.
Norwood Press:
J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith.
Boston, Mass., U.S.A.
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.
Transcribers corrected several spelling and accent errors in French.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.
Text refers to Colonel “Delgorgue” but the correct spelling is “Delegorgue.”