164 Sport and Life. 



" 'Tis, I guess, that tarnation skunk who got away with the black- 

 tail I hung up behind the corral last week. He is making for the 

 ford, but he ain't going to get there," he replied, not half as excited 

 as I was by the sight of the 'bar coming straight for the log cabin. 

 " Sit quiet, and let him come close," he said, as he handed me my 

 rifle from the peg where it was hanging, and taking down his own. 

 By this time Bruin was about three hundred or four hundred yards 

 off, and fearing that he might at any moment swerve off to one side 

 or the other, I put up my sights and made ready to shoot whenever 

 he should do so. 



This, however, did not happen, for the bear kept on his course, 

 charging down upon the hut as determined as you please. When 

 he was about eighty yards off, he paused for a second, for old 

 Benjamin was careering round his stake in the most excited 

 manner, his keen old eye having detected Mr. Bruin from afar. 

 This was a favourable moment, I thought, to shoot, quite forgetting 

 to put down my sights, which, at the first alarm, I had put up to 

 400 yards. Of course, I overshot the bear by feet, a slight rise 

 behind the animal showing the impact of the bullet. Clark, who 

 had killed more grizzlies than there were weeks in the year, burst 

 out laughing. The cartridge in the left barrel went nearer the 

 mark, but though it rolled over Bruin by grazing the backbone, it 

 by no means stopped him, for he was on his legs, and, wonderful 

 to relate, still making straight for the cabin, as if those two '500 bore 

 shots were so many puffs of air. Before I had time to find and 

 insert two cartridges, the bear was not thirty yards off, and at that 

 moment the old man's rifle, a short, old-fashioned carbine, shooting 

 a sixteen to the pound pointed bullet, had its say, and the " tarna- 

 tion skunk" rolled over, this time to rise no more. That I felt 

 thoroughly ashamed of my execrable shooting I need hardly say, 

 and though I think Bruin would have succumbed finally to the 

 wound inflicted by my second shot, I well deserved the old man's 

 sarcastic advice, that in the case of grizzlies closer shooting was in 

 order, if I did not want to get chawed up. The bear's conduct was 

 really less inexplicable than it looked, for he was making straight 



