190 HUNTING SPORTS OF THE WEST. 



The answer came from no great distance, and in a few 

 minutes my dear old Conwell, and most of the Indians, 

 were at my side. I grasped Conwell's hand sorrowfully, 

 and told him in few words how it had all happened. The 

 old man scolded, and said it served us right ; there was 

 no grqat danger in sticking a. knife into a bear's paunch, 

 when he is falling, with the dogs upon him, but if he has 

 been thrown, and then catches sight of his greatest enemy, 

 man, he exerts all his force to attack him^-and woe to him 

 who comes within reach of his paws. It was all very 

 well talking ; he had not been present, and seen one dog 

 after another knocked over never to rise again; five 

 minutes more, and not one would have been saved, and 

 who knows whether the enraged beast would not have 

 attacked us, then. 



Meantime, the Indians had been digging a grave with 

 their tomahawks. Wrapping the body in a blanket, they 

 laid him in it, and covered him with earth and heavy 

 stones. Conwell cut down some young stems, and made 

 a fence round the solitary grave. I could not avoid a 

 shudder at the quiet coolness of the whole proceeding, as 

 the thought struck me, that the same persons, under the 

 same circumstances, would have treated me in the same 

 cool way, had I fallen instead of Erskine. Like me, he 

 was a lonely stranger in a foreign land, having left Eng- 

 land some years before, and his friends and relations 

 will probably never know what has become of him. 

 Thousands perish in this way in America, of whom no- 

 thing more is heard, and perhaps in a few months the 

 remembrance of them has entirely passed away. 



After the dead was quietly laid in the grave, Wachiga 



