"Of course his back was three-quarters to me when I fired. My ball just nipped him enough to let him know I was there—'twas a kind of a visiting-card. Down fell the wapiti and round the bear whisked, surprisingly spry for so lumbering a creature. With his red eyes and the dashes of red blood from the wapiti's carcass, he made a bad-looking brute to stand facing a man, I can tell you. He caught sight of me directly, even standing there like a stone man amongst the lot of dwarf trees and bowlders. Then he shook himself and snarled, and started straight up the ravine for me.
"I won't say that I stood my ground, or anything about not being afraid. I ran back a little off the edge of sand and stones and was exceedingly scared. The bear came panting and growling and lumbering up, snapping his teeth, which I could see plain enough now. I let fly for the second time, taking for a mark the white horseshoe on his breast.
MARK OUTRIGGER IN THE CLUTCHES OF THE BEAR.
"To this day I can't ever think of what happened just as I fired that shot without a shiver. A mole, or some other burrowing little beast, had dug a part of his tunnel right under my right foot. At the minute that I fired my foot went clean down through the roof of his house, poor fellow, and my ankle turned. I fell sidewise, my gun going off in the air as I threw out my arms, dropping the piece at the same second. Before I could wrench out my foot or struggle round into any sort of a position to defend myself, or grasp my gun to tackle him with the stock of it, the bear was at my side.
"He seized me in his jaws just here—see?—gave me a horrible shake, and then dropped me. I thought I felt every bone in it crunched in the bite.
"I can't truthfully say that I recollect thinking of anybody or anything, unless that it was certainly all over with me, and that my knife was so twisted round in my belt that it seemed as if I never could get it out. Meanwhile the bear, after that first crushing bite, stood still, breathing straight down into my face and growling like an old lion. He had one of his paws planted flat on my chest—like this, and standing completely over me from the waist downward.
"But by this time I had gripped my knife firmly underneath me. So I dragged out my arm and whipped the blade, point upward, into his body, as near to where his heart would be as I could judge. My eyes I kept tight shut; and until this movement, mostly under him, I had not stirred. I wrenched myself out at the same time from under his great paw, and fairly rolled two or three feet beyond him.
"Such a howl of fury and torment as he gave when he felt me moving and then got the benefit of the stab! I knew that it would be a very short matter after this for one or the other of us. Torn and bleeding all over, with his teeth snapping around my head and his claws tearing into my flesh—you can see the marks to-day—I fought as I believe never a hunter fought before, dodging his blows and striking at him again and again. Once I got up on one knee—an awful sight I must have looked—and gave him a stab across his face that left him only one eye for the battle.