He walked leisurely until he was within seven or eight rods of us. Then he stopped and looked at us a minute, but started forward again, and would probably have gone on civilly, had not Ed took our gun, which we kept loaded, and ran after him.
Hearing Ed coming, the bear turned round and ran towards him.
Ed stopped and took aim. The bear at once rose on his hind legs, and fanned the air with his paws.
Ed fired, and fortunately killed him with a single charge of buck-shot.
But I never saw a poorer bear. His hair was rusty, and he was evidently not in good health. The meat we could not eat; the very crows would have passed it by.
We wanted, however, candles to study by, and thought we could obtain grease enough from poor bruin to serve this purpose.
So we cut the body up, hair and all,–for his hide absolutely stuck to his bones,–and that night cleared out one of the kettles, and commenced trying out our bear's grease.
The contents of the kettle sizzled there all the evening, giving off anything but an agreeable odor. We were translating the fable of "The Mouse and the Peasant" that night, and nihil Mehurcule is still mixed up in my mind with the odor of that old bear.
By nine o'clock the oil was fried out. We throw the scraps into the fire, and these made, if possible, a still more disagreeable odor as they burned. The whole swamp was full of it.