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 
