“Ha,” exclaimed Swiftwater, “a kodiak, and a corker; the biggest one I ever saw. You fellers were lucky to get him on the first shot, for that breed can make an awful mess if they start to fight. Hey, Skookum, catch hold and let’s flop him over.”
Having satisfied themselves that the bear was dead, the miner and the guide, with the aid of the Indians, moved the enormous mass which, with the Indian’s blow, had slumped down upon its hindquarters. With the greatest difficulty they succeeded in straightening it out. The Indian dog had been squeezed into a shapeless mass, and, ascertaining this, the Indian gave it no further attention for the time being.
“Mighty good thing you had a softnosed bullet in that rifle,” said Skookum, pointing to the gaping wound in the breast of the bear. “That spread, and did the business right away. A steel jacketed bullet would have gone straight through and would not have done so much harm. Then you might have been where the dog was.”
Jack, who had been seized with a sort of buck fever after he realized what he had shot, was trembling with excitement as he received the almost envious congratulations of his friends.
“Begorra, we’ll courtmartial you and drop ye from the Patrol,” said Gerald, “if ye insist grabbing all the glory for yourself this way. Why don’t you let us know when you are going out after adventures?”
“Yes, this is the second time that you have gone knight-erranting by your lone,” said Dick, “and I can see nothing for it. If this Patrol of Boy Scouts is to get any chance to make a reputation it will have to put Mr. Jack Blake on a leash, and tie him to our wrists when we lie down to sleep.”
“Weel, if that big bear or whatever it is, is really dead, ye’ve certainly made a better job of it than ye did with Monkey,” exclaimed Don, and, with the laugh that followed, poor Jack felt that the ridiculousness of that episode on the steamer had been practically wiped out.
Swiftwater and Skookum measured the huge brown carcass that lay stretched on the sand before them, and found it to be nearly ten feet from tip to tip. They guessed its weight to be about eight hundred pounds.
“That’s about the limit,” said Skookum, “tho’ I did hear of a skin once that measured thirteen feet.”
“Well, Jack,” said Swiftwater, “you’ve killed the largest meat-eating critter, in the world—carnivorous I think ye call it. There’s none bigger than the big brown bear of Alaska. Some say he isn’t so fierce as the grizzly, but he is nearly twice as big, and there’s certain seasons that he’ll fight at the drop of the hat, as the sayin’ goes. I never see one so far from the coast before. He’s called a kodiak because he hangs out down on Kodiak Island and on the Alaska and Kenai peninsulas.”