33 8 Hunting Trips on the Prairie 



great pine. As soon as he was by it he sank sud- 

 denly on one knee, turning half round, his face fairly 

 aflame with excitement; and as I strode past him, 

 with my rifle at the ready, there, not ten steps off, 

 was the great bear, slowly rising from his bed 

 among the young spruces. He had heard us, but 

 apparently hardly knew exactly where or what we 

 were, for he reared up on his haunches sidewise to 

 us. Then he saw us and dropped down again on 

 all fours, the shaggy hair on his neck and shoulders 

 seeming to bristle as he turned toward us. As he 

 sank down on his forefeet I had raised the rifle; 

 his head was bent slightly down, and when I saw 

 the top of the white bead fairly between his small, 

 glittering, evil eyes, I pulled trigger. Half-rising 

 up, the huge beast fell over on his side in the death 

 throes, the ball having gone into his brain, striking 

 as fairly between the eyes as if the distance had been 

 measured by a carpenter's rule. 



The whole thing was over in twenty seconds from 

 the time I caught sight of the game; indeed, it was 

 over so quickly that the grisly did not have time to 

 show fight at all or come a step toward us. It was 

 the first I had ever seen, and I felt not a little proud, 

 as I stood over the great brindled bulk, which lay 

 stretched out at length in the cool shade of the ever- 

 greens. He was a monstrous fellow, much larger 

 than any I have seen since, whether alive or brought 

 in dead by the hunters. As near as we could esti- 

 mate (for of course we had nothing with which to 

 weigh more than very small portions) he must have 



