STRONG left camp with his pack and rifle and two bear-traps. He was
nearing the dead buck when a shot stopped him, and a bullet cut
through his left fore-arm. The deadly missile came no swifter than his
understanding of it.
He dropped as if a death-blow had struck him, and, clinging to his
rifle, crept in among the firs. He flung off the straps of his basket.
He lay still a moment and then cautiously got to his knees. Blood was
trickling down his hand, but he gave no heed to it. The ball had come
from higher ground, towards which he had been walking. The man who had
tried to kill him could not have stood more than two hundred feet away.
Strong sat, rifle in hand, peering through the fir branches--alert as
a panther waiting for its prey. Soon he caught a glimpse of his enemy
fleeing between distant tree columns. The sight seemed to fill him with
deadly anger.
He leaped to his feet, seized his pack-basket, and started swiftly in
pursuit of him. He gained the summit of the high ground and saw a broad
slash covered with berry bushes and sloping to the flats around Bushrod
Creek. A trail cut through it from the edge of the woods near him.
He stopped and listened. He could hear the sound of retreating footsteps
and could see briers moving some thirty rods down the slash. His heart
had shaken off its rage. He was now the cunning, stealthy, determined
hunter. He saw a dry, stag-headed pine in the edge of the briers near
him and hurried up its shaft like a bear pressed by the dogs. On a dead
limb, some thirty feet above ground, he halted and looked away. He could
see nothing of his unknown foe.
Slowly Strong descended from the dead tree. He had just begun to feel
the pain of his wound. Blood was dripping fast from it; he looked like
a butcher in the midst of his task. He muttered as he began to roll his
sleeve, "G-guess they do inten't' shove me out o' this c-country."
He blew as he looked at the wound.
"B-Business is p-prosperin'," he went on, as he held one end of a big
red handkerchief between his teeth and wound it above the torn muscles
and firmly knotted the ends.
"W-war!" he muttered, as he went to the near bushes and began to gather
spiders' webs.
It is to be regretted that for a moment he forgot his promise to Socky
and "boiled over" from the heat of his passion.
He sat on the ground and with his knife scraped away the blood clots.
"D-damn soft-nose bullet!" he muttered, with a serious look, smoothing,
down the fibres of torn flesh.
He spread the webs upon his wound, and held them close awhile under his
great palm. Soon he moistened a lot of tobacco and put it on the
webs and held it there. After an hour or so the blood stopped. Then,
gradually, he relieved the tension of his handkerchief, and by-and-by
used it for a bandage on his wound.
He rose and shouldered his pack and began to search for the tracks of
his enemy. He soon discovered those of the bear which had fled before
him that morning.
"S-see here, Strong," he muttered, "th-this won't scurcely do. I arrest
you, S. Strong, Esquire. Y-you're my prisoner. T-tryin' t' kill a
man--you b-bloodthirsty devil! C-come with me. We'll hunt fer b-bears."
The Emperor had often addressed himself with severe and even copious
condemnation, but this was the first time that he had ever taken S.
Strong by the coat-collar and violently faced him about.
He could see clearly where the bear had broken through the wet briers on
his way down to the flat country. It was a moment of peril, and he gave
himself no time for argument. He hurried away in the trail of the bear.
It lay before him, unmistakable as the wake of a boat, and would show
where the animal was wont to cross the water below. He came soon to a
great log lying from shore to shore of that inlet of Rainbow which was
called Bushrod Creek. He could see tracks near the end of the log, and
there, with a spruce pole for a lever, he set his traps in the sand so
that, if the first were not sprung, the second would be sure to take
hold. He covered the great, yawning, seven-toothed jaws of steel and
fastened heavy clogs upon both trap chains. Then he took the piece of
bacon from his pack and hung it on a branch above the traps.
Shrewdly the hunter had made his plan.
That bear would probably return to the dead buck, and the scent of the
bacon would attract him to that particular crossing.
He tore two pages from his memorandum-book, and wrote this warning on
each: