158 THE LOG OF A TIMBER CRUISER 



instant he came back at full speed, eyes popping and 

 legs working wildly. Ten yards behind him, snarl- 

 ing and fighting the brush, lumbered a full grown 

 cinnamon bear. He was in a towering rage, caused 

 very evidently by a steel trap and eight feet of heavy 

 chain broken from its fastening that trailed from 

 his prisoned hind foot. Had it not been for this 

 drag he would doubtless have caught Wallace be- 

 fore the Forest Assistant had gone twenty feet. 

 For an angry bear, despite his awkward looking 

 mode of locomotion, can make astonishing speed 

 through the woods. As it was Wallace was able to 

 reach an oak tree and shinny up the trunk, which 

 was only about seven inches in diameter, before his 

 pursuer reached the bottom. 



I suppose the theory was that no bear would climb 

 so small a tree or perhaps the frightened youth 

 merely made instinctively for the nearest temporary 

 refuge. However that be the beast hesitated not at 

 all but began to ascend the trunk as swiftly as his 

 clanking, unwieldy burden would permit. He made 

 hard work of it. His roars of rage proclaimed the 

 pain he must have felt as the ruthless steel claws 

 of the trap in which he had been caught pulled and 

 twisted at his torn flesh. But he worked gradually 

 though slowly upward. He would, without doubt, 

 have succeeded in reaching his quarry had not a 

 timely interruption occurred. 



When Horace first saw Wallace with the bear in 



