Few wilderness adventures offer a more stern test to human nerves than
the frightful rush of a maddened grizzly. It typifies all that is primal
and savage in the wild: the insane rage that can find relief only in the
cruel rending of flesh; the thundering power that no mere mortal
strength can withstand. But Ben was a woodsman. He had been tried in the
fire. He knew that not only his life, but that of the girl in the cavern
depended upon this one shot; and it was wholly characteristic of Wolf
Darby that his eye held true and his arm was steady as a vice of iron.
He was aware that he must wait until the bear was almost upon him, in
order to be sure to send the bullet home to a vital place. This alone
was a test requiring no small measure of self-control. The instinct was
to fire at once. In the moonlight it was difficult to see his sights:
his only chance was to enlarge his target to the last, outer limit of
safety. He aimed for the great throat, below the slavering jaw.
His finger pressed back steadily against the trigger. The slightest
flinching, the smallest motion might yet throw off his aim. The rifle
spoke with a roar.
But this wilderness battle was not yet done. The ball went straight
home, down through the throat, mushrooming and plowing on into the neck,
inflicting a wound that was bound to be mortal within a few seconds. The
bear recoiled; but the mighty engine of its life was not yet destroyed.
Its incalculable fonts of vitality had not yet run down.
The grizzly bounded forward again. The ball had evidently missed the
vertebrae and spinal column. His crashing, thunderous roar of pain
smothered instantly the reechoing report of the rifle and stifled the
instinctive cry that had come to Ben's lips. He was a forester; and he
had known of old what havoc a mortally wounded bear can wreak in a few
seconds of life. In that strange, vivid instant Ben knew that his own
and the girl's life still hung in the balance, with the beam inclining
toward death.
The grizzly was in his death-agony, nothing more; yet in that final
convulsion he could rip into shreds the powerful form that opposed him.
Ben knew, with a cold, sure knowledge, that if he failed to slay the
beast, it would naturally crawl into its lair for its last breath. As
this dreadful thought flashed home he dropped the empty rifle and seized
the axe that leaned against a log of spruce beside the fire.
There was no time at all to search out another shell and load his rifle.
If the shock of the heavy bullet had not slackened the bear's pace he
would not even have had time to seize the axe. Finally, if the bear had
not been all but dead, in his last, threshing agony, Ben's mortal
strength could not have sent home one blow. As it was they found
themselves facing each other over the embers of the fire, well-matched
contestants whose stake was life and whose penalty was death. The
grizzly turned his head, caught sight of Ben, identified him as the
agent of his agony, and lurched forward.
Just in time Ben sprang aside, out of the reach of those terrible
forearms; and his axe swung mightly in the air. Its blade gleamed and
descended--a blow that might have easily broken the bear's back if it
had gone true but which now seemed only to infuriate him the more. The
bear reared up, reeled, and lashed down; and dying though he was, he
struck with incredible power. One slashing stroke of that vast forepaw,
one slow closing of those cruel fangs upon skull or breast, and life
would have gone out like a light. But Ben leaped aside again, and again
swung down his axe.
These were but the first blows of a terrific battle that carried like a
storm through the still reaches of the forest. Far in the distant tree
aisles the woods people paused in their night's occupation to listen,
stirred and terrified by the throb and thrill in the air; the grazing
caribou lifted his growing horns and snorted in terror; the beasts of
prey paused in the chase, growling uneasily, gazing with fierce,
luminous eyes in the direction of the battle.
It is beyond the ken of man whether or not, in their wild hearts, these
forest folk sensed what was taking place,--that their gray monarch, the
sovereign grizzly, was at the death-fight with some dreadful invader
from the South. They heard the bear's fierce bawls, unimitatable by any
other voice as he lashed down blow after blow; and they heard the thud
and crunch of the axe against his body. Had this monarch of the trails
found his master at last?
Gazing out through the aperture of the cave Beatrice beheld the whole
picture: the ring of spruce trees, the glade so strange and ensilvered
in the moonlight, and these two fighting beasts, magnificent in fury
over the embers of the dying fire. And Ben's powers increased, rather
than lessened. Ever he swung his terrible axe with greater power.
He fought like the wolf that was his blood brother,--lunging, striking
down, recoiling out of harm's way, and springing forward to strike
again. This man was Wolf Darby, a forester known in many provinces for
his woods prowess, but even those who had seen his most spectacular
feats, in past days, had not appreciated the real extent of his powers.
There was a fury and a might in his blows that was hard to associate
with the world of human beings,--such ferociousness and wolf-like
savagery, welling strength and prowess of battle that mostly men have
forgotten in their centuries of civilization, but which still mark the
death-fight between beasts.
Ben had always recalled the earlier types of man--his great-thewed
ancestors, wild hunters in the forests of ancient Germany--but never so
much as to-night. He was in his natural surroundings--at the mouth of
his cave in which the Woman watched and exulted in his blows, enclosed
by the primeval forest and beside the ashes of his fire. There could be
nothing strange or unreal about this scene to Beatrice. It was more true
than any soft vista of a far-away city could possibly be. It was life
itself,--man battling for his home and his woman against the raw forces
of the wild.
All superficialities and superfluities were gone, and only the basic
stuff of life remained,--the cave, the fire, the man who fought the
beast in the light of the ancient moon. At that moment Ben was no more
of the twentieth century than he was of the first, or of the first more
than of some dark, unnumbered century of the world's young days. He was
simply the male of his species, the man-child of all time, forgetting
for the moment all the little lessons civilization had taught, and
fighting his fight in the basic way for the basic things.
This was no new war which Ben and the grizzly fought in the pale light
of the moon. It had begun when the race began, and it would continue,
in varied fields, until men perished from the earth. Ben fought for
_life_--not only his own but the girl's--that old, beloved privilege to
breathe the air and see and know and be. He represented, by a strange
symbolism, the whole race that has always fought in merciless and
never-ending battle with the cruel and oppressive powers of nature. In
the grizzly were typified all those ancient enemies that have always
opposed, with claw and fang, this stalwart, self-knowing breed that has
risen among the primates: he symbolized not only the Beast of the
forest, but the merciless elements, storm and flood and cold and all the
legions of death. And had they but known their ultimate fate if this
intruder survived the battle and brought his fellows into this, their
last stronghold, the watching forest creatures would have prayed to see
the grizzly strike him to the earth.
Ben knew, too, that he was fighting for his home; and this also lent him
strength. _Home_! His shelter from the storm and the cold, the thing
that marked him a man instead of a beast. The grizzly had come to drive
him forth; and they had met beside the ashes of his fire.
The old exhilaration and rapture of battle flashed through him as he
swung his axe, sending home blow after blow. Sometimes he cried out,
involuntarily, in his fury and hatred; and as the bear weakened he waged
the fight at closer quarters. His muscles made marvelous response,
flinging him out of danger in the instant of necessity and giving
terrific power to his blows.
He danced about the shaggy, bleeding form of the bear, swinging his axe,
howling in his rage, and escaping the smashing blows of the bear with
miraculous agility,--a weird and savage picture in the moonlight. But
at last the grizzly lunged too far. Ben sprang aside, just in time, and
he saw his chance as the great, reeling form sprawled past. He aimed a
terrific blow just at the base of the skull.
The silence descended quickly thereafter. The blow had gone straight
home, and the last flicker of waning life fled from the titanic form. He
went down sprawling; Ben stood waiting to see if another blow was
needed. Then the axe fell from his hands.
For a moment he stood as if dazed. It was hard to remember all that
occurred in the countless life times he had lived since the grizzly had
stolen out of the spruce forest. But soon he remembered Fenris and
walked unsteadily to his side.
The wolf, however, was already recovering from the blow. He had been
merely stunned; seemingly no bones were broken. Once more Ben turned to
the mouth of the cavern.
Sobbing and white as the moonlight itself Beatrice met him in the
doorway. She too had been uninjured; his arm had saved her from the
rending fangs. She was closer to him now, filling a bigger part of his
life. He didn't know just why. He had fought for her; and some way--they
were more to each other.
And this was his cavern,--his stronghold of rock where he might lay his
head, his haven and his hearth, and the symbol of his dominance over the
beasts of the field. He had fought for this, too. And he suddenly knew a
great and inner peace and a love for the sheltering walls that would
dwell forever in the warp and woof of his being.