MY LAST BEAR. 91 



by. At last I was completely done up, jumping over 

 logs and having my eyes almost cut out of my liead 

 every minute by brambles, and came to an anchor under 

 a hazel-busb near a large natural clearing of beautiful 

 grass. I lit my pipe, eat some bread and cheese and 

 drank some cutter, and concluded that bear shooting 

 in Oregon was, as my French master used to say, ^' not 

 de common error, but de gross deception." All of a 

 sudden I heard a shot not one hundred yards ofiF, and 

 then a howl, and finally a rush as if ten thousand buffalo 

 bulls were on a stampede. A minute after and the 

 Injun came helter-skelter head over heels down the hill, 

 how-howmg and wagh-waghing, like an escaped lunatic ! 

 I thought I knew the situation, and my mind was made 

 up in an instant. Did my eagle eye fix the monster, or 

 my lip curb with a haughty smile, as I, &c., &c. ? not 

 much ; I cut it across the clearing at my best sprint pace, 

 as if I was well in at a handicap at Lillie Bridge. I 

 just took half a look over my shoulder, and could 

 scarcely help laughing. The noble savage was taking 

 logs, bushes, ruts, and all minor obstacles in his stride, 

 like a steeplechaser, and for a very good reason, for 

 barely thirty yards behind him was a hnge cinnamon 

 bear, growling like a bassoon and going like a steam 

 engine ! I was about one hundred yards in front, and 

 kneeling down I let fly at him, and hit him somewhere I 

 thought, but it seemed no more than a sort of fleabite 

 to him, as he came on with ears back, and looking to me 

 a trifle smaller than a haystack. I now thought about a 

 tree but found none to let for a single young man, so off 

 I went again, and that brute of a red man close behind 

 me in my tracks. Suddenly without the least warning he 

 darted aside like a pea into the chapparal and Mr. Bruin 



