Several seasons before there had been a fatality on the hillside above
Creek Despair. An ancient spruce tree, one that had watched the forest
drama for uncounted years, whose tall head lifted above all the
surrounding forest and who had known the silence and the snow of a
hundred winters, had languished, withered and died from sheer old age.
For some seasons it had stood in its place, silent and grim and majestic
in death. On the day that the three hunters emerged on their snowshoes
in search of meat for their depleted larder, the wind pressed gently
against it. Because its trunk was rotted away it swayed and fell
heavily.
There was nothing particularly memorable in this. All trees die; all of
them fall at last. Its particular significance lay in the fact that as
it shattered down, sliding a distance on the steep hillside, it scraped
the snow from the mouth of a winter lair of a scarcely less venerable
forest inhabitant,--a savage, long-clawed, gray-furred grizzly bear.
The creature had gone into hibernation weeks before: he was deep in the
cold-trance--that mysterious coma of which the wisest naturalists have
no real knowledge--when the tree fell. He hadn't in the least counted
on being disturbed until the leaves budded out in spring. He had filled
his belly well, crawled into a long, narrow cavern in the rock, the snow
had sifted down and sealed him in, his bodily heat had warmed to a
sufficient degree the little alcove in the cavern that he occupied, his
blood temperature had dropped down and his breathing had almost ceased,
and he had lain in a deep, strange stupor, oblivious to the passage of
time. And he felt the rage known to all sleepy men on being awakened.
The grizzly is a particularly crafty, intelligent animal--on the
intellectual plane of the dog and elephant--and he had chosen his
winter lair with special purpose in mind of a long and uninterrupted
sleep. The cavern mouth was so well concealed that even the sharp eyes
of the wild creatures, passing up and down the creek hardly a hundred
feet away, never guessed its existence. The cavern maw had been large
once, for all to see, but an avalanche had passed over it. Tons of
snow, picking up a great cargo of rocks and dirt that no stream dredge
in the world could lift, had roared and bellowed down the slope,
narrowly missing the trunk of the great spruce, changing the contour of
the creek bed and concealing its landmarks, and only a square yard of
the original entrance was left. This opening was concealed by a little
cluster of young spruce that had sprung up in the fallen earth. Yes,
old Ephraim had had every reason to believe that no one would find him
or break his sleep, and he was all the more angry at the interruption.
The falling tree had made a frightful crash just over his head, and even
the deep coma in which the grizzly lay was abruptly dissolved. He
sprang up, ready to fight. A little gleam of sunlight ventured through
the spruce thicket, down into the mouth of the cavern, and lay like a
patch of gold on the cavern floor. It served to waken some slight
degree of interest in the snowy world without. It might be well to look
around a moment, at least, before he lay down to sleep again. At least
he had to scrape more snow over the cabin mouth. And in the meantime he
might be lucky enough to find the dearest delight in his life,--a
good, smashing, well-matched fight to cool the growing anger in his
great veins.
Ephraim was an old bear, used to every hunting wile, and his disposition
hadn't improved with years. He was the undisputed master of the forest,
and he couldn't think of any particular enemy that he would not
encounter with a roar of joy. As often, in the case of the old, his
teeth were rotting away; and the pain was a darting, stabbing devil in
his gums. His little, fierce eyes burned and smoldered with wrath, he
grunted deep in his throat, and he pushed out savagely through the
cavern maw. It was only a step farther through the spruce thicket into
the sunlight. And at the first glance he knew that his wish was coming
true.
Three figures, two abreast and one behind, came mushing through the
little pass where the creek flowed. He knew them well enough. There
were plenty of grizzly traditions concerned with them. He recognized
them in an instant as his hereditary foes,--the one breed that had not
yet learned to give him right-of-way on the trail. They were tall,
fearful forms, and something in their eyes sent a shudder of cold clear
to his heart, yet he was not in the humor to give ground. His nerves
were jumpy and unstrung from the fall of the tree, his jaw wracked him;
a turn of the hair might decide whether he would merely stand and let
them pass, or whether he would launch into that terrible, death-dealing
charge that most grizzly hunters, sooner or later, come to know. His
mental processes did not go far enough to disassociate these enemies
with the stabbing foe in his gums. For the same reason he blamed them
for disruption of his sleep. His ears laid back, and he uttered a deep
growl.
There was no more magnificent creature in all of the breadth of the
forest than this, the grizzly of the Selkirks. He was old and savage
and wise; but for all his years, in the highest pinnacle of his
strength. No man need to glance twice at him to know his glory. No
tenderfoot could look at him and again wonder why, in the talk round the
camp fire, the tried woodsmen always spoke of the grizzly with respect.
It was true that in the far corners of the earth there were creatures
that could master him. The elephant could crush the life from his
mighty body with the power of his knees; Kobaoba the rhino, most surly
of all game, could have pierced his heart with his horn; perhaps
even the Cape buffalo--that savage explosive old gentleman of the
African marshes, most famous for his deadly propensity to charge on
sight--could have given him a fair battle. But woe to the lion that
should be obliged to face that terrible strength! Even the tiger,
sinuous and terrible--armed with fangs like cruel knives and dreadful,
raking, rending claws--could not have faced him in a fair fight.
But these were folk of the tropics, and his superiority was unquestioned
among the northern animals. Even the bull moose had no wish to engage
in a stand-up-and-take, close-range, death fight with a grizzly. The
bull caribou left his trail at the sound of his heavy body in the
thicket; the wolf pack, most deadly of fighting organizations, were glad
to avoid him in the snow. His first cousins, the Alaskan bears, were
more mighty than he, but they were less agile and, probably, less
cunning. Such lesser creatures as wished to continue to enjoy the
winter sunlight stepped softly when they journeyed past his lair.
He was a peculiar gray in color,--like brown hair that has silvered in
many winters. His huge head was lowered between his high, rocking
shoulders, his forelegs were simply great, knotty, cast-iron bunches of
fiber and tendons; his long claws--worn down by digging in the rocks
for marmots--were like great, curved fingers. As he stepped, his
forefeet swung out, giving to his carriage an arrogance and a swagger
that would have been amusing if it hadn't been terrible. His wicked
teeth gleamed white in foam, and the hair stood stiff at his shoulders.
There is no forest crisis that presents such a test to human nerves as
the charge of a grizzly. There is no forest voice more fraught with
ferocity and savagery of the beasts of prey than his low, deep,
reverberating growl. Human beings have not yet reached such perfection
of self-mastery that they can hear such a sound, leaping suddenly like a
thing of substance through the bush, and disregard it. It was to be
that these three foes, journeying toward him along Creek Despair, did
not disregard it now. For all the depth of the snow, he pushed through
the spruce thicket into the sunlight.
Thus the three hunters met him--in all his strength and glory--not
fifty feet distant at the base of the hill. He seemed to be poised to
charge.
Bill's keen eyes saw the bear first. All at once its huge outline
against the snow leaped to his vision. At the same instant the bear
growled, a sound that halted halted Virginia and Harold in their tracks.
For an instant all four figures stood in indescribable tableau: the bear
poised, the three staring, the snowy wastes silent and changeless and
unreal.
It was the last sight in the world that Bill had expected. He had
supposed that the grizzlies were all in hibernation now; he hadn't
conceived of the possibilities whereby the great creature had been
called from his sleep. And he knew in one glance the full peril of the
situation.
Often in his forest travels Bill had met grizzlies, and nearly always he
had passed them by. Usually the latter were glad to make their escape;
and Bill would hasten their departure with shouts of glee. Yet this man
knew the grizzly, his power and his wrath, and most of all he knew his
utter unreliability. It is not the grizzly way to stand impassive when
he is at bay, and neither does he like to flee up hill. If the animal
did think his escape was cut off--a delusion to which the bear family
seem particularly subject--he would charge them with a fury and might
that had no equal in the North American animal world. And a grizzly
charge is a difficult thing to stop in a distance of fifty feet.
The presence of Virginia in their party had its influence in Bill's
decision. In times past he had been willing enough to take a small
measure of risk to his own life, but the life of every grizzly in the
North could not pay for one jot of risk to hers. Lastly he realized at
the first sight of those glowing, angry eyes, the ears back, and the
stiff hairs on the shoulder that the grizzly was in a fighting mood.
For all the complexity of his thought, his decision did not take an
instant. There was no waiting to offer the sporting opportunity to
Harold. Virginia was not aware of a lapse in time between the instant
that Bill caught sight of the bear and that in which his gun came
leaping to his shoulder. He had full confidence in the hard-hitting
vicious bullet in Harold's thirty-five, and most of all he relied on the
four reserve shots that he supposed lay in the rifle magazine. The
grizzly dies hard: he felt that all four of them would be needed to
arrest the charge that would likely follow his first shot.
He didn't wait for those great muscles to get into action. The animal
was standing broadside to him, his head turned and red eyes watching; if
Bill had his own gun, he would have aimed straight for the space between
the eyes. This is never a sportsman's shot; but for an absolute
marksman, in a moment of crisis, it is the surest shot of all. But he
did not know Harold's gun well enough to trust such a shot. Indeed, he
aimed for the great shoulder, the region of the lungs and heart. The
gun cracked in the silence.
The bullet went straight home, ripping through the lungs, tearing the
great arteries about the heart, shivering even a portion of the heart
itself. And yet the grizzly sprang like a demon through the deep snow,
straight towards him.
It is no easy thing to face a grizzly's charge. The teeth gleam in red
foam, the eyes flash, the great shoulders rock. For all the deep snow
that he bounded through, the beast approached at an unbelievable pace.
He bawled as he came--awful, reverberating sounds that froze the blood
in the veins. If the course had been open, likely he would have been
upon him before Bill could send home another shot. There could only be
one result to such a meeting as this. One blow would strike the life
from Bill's body as the lightning strikes it from a tree. But the snow
impeded the bear, and it seemed to Virginia's horrified eyes that Bill
would have time to empty the magazine. She saw his fingers race as he
worked the lever action of the gun: she saw his eyes lower again to the
sights. The bear seemed almost upon him. And she screamed when she
heard the impotent click of the hammer against the breech. Bill had
fires the single shot that was in the gun.
Before ever he heard the sound Harold remembered. In one wave of horror
he recalled that he had forgotten to refill the magazine with shells.
Yet leaping fast--red and deadly and terrible upon the heels of his
remorse--there came an emotion that seared him like a wall of fire.
He saw Bill's fate. By no circumstance of which he could conceive could
the man escape. A shudder passed over his frame, but it was not of
revulsion. Rather it was an emotion known well to the beasts of prey,
though to human beings it comes but rarely. Here was his enemy, the man
he hated above all living creatures, and the blood lust surged through
him like a madness. In one wave of ecstasy he felt that he was about to
see the gratification of his hatred.
In the hands of a brave and loyal man, the rifle Harold carried might
yet have been Bill's salvation. It was a large-caliber, close-range gun
of stupendous striking power. Yet Harold didn't lift it to his
shoulder. Part of it was willful omission, mostly it was the paralysis
of terror. Yet he would have need enough for the gun if the bear turned
on him. He saw that Bill's had was groping, hopeless though the effort
was, for one of the shells that Harold had given him and which he
carried in his pocket.
But there was no time to find it, to open his gun and insert it, and to
fire before the ravening enemy would be upon him. He made the effort
simply because it was his creed: to struggle as long as his life blood
pulsed in his veins. He knew there was no chance to run or dodge. The
bear could go at thrice his own pace in the deep snow. His last hope
had been that Harold would come to his aid: that the man would stop the
bear's charge with Bill's own heavy rifle; but now he knew that Harold's
enmity of cowardice had betrayed him.
But at that instant aid came from an unexpected quarter. Virginia was
not one to stand helpless or to turn and flee. She remembered the
pistol at her belt, and she drew it in a flash of blue steel. True and
straight she aimed toward the glowing eyes of the grizzly.
At the angle that they struck, her bullets did not penetrate the brain,
but they did give Bill an instant's reprieve. The bear struck at the
wounds they made, then halted, bawling, in the snow. His roving eye
caught sight of Virginia's form. With a roar he bounded toward her.
The next instant was one of drama, of incredible stress and movement.
For all his mortal wounds, the short distance between the bear and the
girl seemed to recede with tragic swiftness. The animal's cries rang
through the silent forest: near and far the wild creatures paused in
their occupations to listen. Virginia also stood her ground. There was
no use to flee; she merely stood straight, her eyes gazing along her
pistol barrel, firing shot after shot into the animal's head. Because
it was an automatic, she was able to send home the loads in rapid
succession.
But they were little, futile things, with never the shocking power to
stop that blasting charge. Her safety still lay in that in which she
had always trusted, the same that had been her fort and her stronghold
in all their past adventures. Bill saw the grizzly change in direction;
his response was instinctive and instantaneous. He came leaping through
the snow as if a great hand had hurled him, all of his muscles
contracting in response to the swift, immutable command of his will.
For all the burden of his snowshoes and the depths of the drifts, his
leap was almost as fast as the grizzly's own. He had but one
realization: that the girl's tender flesh must never know those rending
claws and fangs. He leaped to intercept the rending charge with his own
body.
But his hand had found the shell by now, dropped it into the gun, and as
a last instinctive effort, pulled back the lever that slid the cartridge
into the barrel. There was no time to raise the gun to his shoulder.
He pointed it instinctively toward the gray throat. And the end of the
barrel was against the bear's flesh as he pressed the trigger.
No human eye could follow the lightning events of the next fraction of a
second. All that occurred was over and done in the duration of one
heart-beat,--before the shudder and explosion in the air from the
rifle's report had passed away. One instant, and the three figures
seemed all together; Bill crouched with rifle held pointed in his arms,
Virginia behind him, the grizzly full upon them both. The next, and
Harold stood alone in the snow and the silence,--awed, terrified, and
estranged as if in a dream.
Except for the three forms that lay still, half-buried and concealed in
the drifts, it was as if the adventure never occurred. The spruce trees
stood straight and aloof as ever. The silence stretched unbroken; its
immensity had swallowed and smothered the last echo of the rifle report
and the grizzly's roar. There was no movement, seemingly no life,--only
the drifts and the winter forest and the futile sun, shining down
between the snow-laden trees.
Yet he knew vaguely what had occurred. The bullet had gone true. It
had pierced the animal's neck, breaking the vertebrae of the spinal
column, and life had gone out of him as a flame goes out in the wind.
But it had come too late to destroy the full force of the charge. Bill
had been struck with some portion of the bear's body as he fell and had
been hurled like a lifeless doll into the drifts. Virginia, too, had
received some echo of that shock, probably from Bill's body as he
shattered down. Now all three lay half-hidden in the snow. Which of
them lived and which were dead Harold dared not guess.
But he had no time to go forward and investigate before Bill had sprung
to his feet. He had received only a glancing blow; the drifts into
which he had fallen were soft as pillows. In reality he had never even
lost consciousness. Still subject to the one thought that guided and
shaped his actions throughout the adventure, he crawled over to
Virginia's side.
No living man had ever seen his face as white as it was now. His eyes
were wide with the image of horror; he didn't know what wounds the dying
bear might have inflicted on the girl. There was no rend in her white
flesh, however; and his eye kindled and his face blazed when he saw that
she yet lived.
He didn't waste even a small part of his energies by futile pleadings
for her to waken. He seized her shoulders and shook her gently.
Instantly her eyes opened. Her full consciousness returned to her with
a rush. She was not scratched, not even shocked by the fall, and she
reached up for Bill's hands. And instantly, with a laugh on her lips,
she sprang to her feet.
"You killed him?" she asked.
It was the first breath she had wasted, and no man might hold it against
her. She had only to look at the huge gray form in the drifts to know
her answer. Bill, because he was a woodsman first, last, and always,
slipped additional shells into Harold's rifle; then walked over to the
bear. He gazed down at its filming eyes.
"Bear's all dead," he answered cheerfully. And Virginia's heart raced
and thrilled, and a delicious exaltation swept through her, when she
glanced down at this woodsman's hands. Big and strong and brown, there
was not a tremor in their fingers.
The both of them whirled in real and superlative astonishment. Some one
was speaking to them. Some one was asking them if they were both all
right. It was a strange voice,--one that they scarcely remembered
ever hearing before.
But they saw at once that the speaker was Harold. He had come with them
to-day, quite true. Both of them had almost forgotten his existence.