136 
FOREST AND STREAM 
as he tossed down the skin at my feet and hand¬ 
ed me the much-abnsed rifle. 
“Gun no good; no wantem.” 
I still have the gun. 
One year, late in the fall, Samuel was trapping 
on the coast near Owl River, fifty miles south 
of the Churchill. For some days there had 
been little doing and so when he came across the 
tracks on the beach of three white bears he 
decided that their skins would be worth going 
after. The trail led inland and was not more 
than two days old. The Indian’s keen eyes read 
the signs of the wild which told him the bears 
were starving. That meant a dangerous hunt for 
one man but the Cree had taken such chances 
before. He had not yet become the owner of a 
magazine rifle but was dependent on his old 
single-barrel muzzle-loader and with this and his 
grub and blankets on his back he took up the 
tiail of three. 
One day’s tramp brought him through the 
woods that fringed the coast and onto the open 
muskeg plains of the interior. Scattered clumps 
of sickly-looking stunted juniper were spread 
about on the barrens and the intervening stretch¬ 
es were dotted with small ice-covered ponds. It 
was near the end of the second day when Sam 
espied the bears—the three of them sporting in 
the center of one of the small lakes on which 
they had broken all the thin ice sheeting. 
No sooner had he emerged from the junipers 
Samuel Was Ready for Number Three. 
than the animals’ sharp eyes spotted the Indian. 
They started through the water toward him, one 
well in advance of his mates. 
“I must get them one at a time,” thought 
Samuel, ‘‘and each with a single shot. If they 
come along one well behind the other I can do 
it, for that will give me time to reload. If they 
come in a bunch I’m done for.” 
There was not a tree for miles around that 
would bear the hunter's weight. Thus Samuel 
Cree Rapid Transit a*- Owl River. 
U 
