. And presently he remembered, heartsick, that
the weapon was not loaded.

For his own safety he had kept it empty on the outward journey, partly
to prevent accident, partly to be sure that his prisoner could not turn
it against him. But he had shells in the pocket of his jacket. His hand
groped, but his reaching fingers found but one shell, dropping it
swiftly into the gun. And now he knew that no time remained to seek
another. The beast in the darkness had launched into the charge.

Thereafter there was only a great confusion, event piled upon event with
incredible rapidity, and a whole lifetime of stress and fear lived in a
single instant. The creature's first lunge carried him into the brighter
moonlight; and at once Ben recognized its breed. No woodsman could
mistake the high, rocking shoulders, the burly form, the wicked ears
laid back against the flat, massive head, the fangs gleaming white, the
long, hooked claws slashing through the turf as he ran. It was a
terrible thing to see and stand against, in the half-darkness. The
shadows accentuated the towering outline; and forgotten terrors,
lurking, since the world was young, in the labyrinth of the germ plasm
wakened and spread like icy streams through the mortal body and seemed
to threaten to extinguish the warm flame of the very soul.

The grizzly bawled as he came, an explosive, incredible storm of sound.
Few indeed are the wilderness creatures that can charge in silence:
muscular exertion can not alone relieve their gathered flood of madness
and fury. And at once Ben sensed the impulse behind the attack. He and
the girl had made their home in the grizzly's cave--perhaps the lair
wherein he had hibernated through the winter and which he still slept in
from time to time--and he had come to drive them out. Only death could
pay for such insolence as this,--to make a night's lair in the den of
his sovereignty, the grizzly.

It is not the accustomed thing for a grizzly to make an unprovoked
attack. He has done it many times, in the history of the west, but
usually he is glad enough to turn aside, only launching into his
terrible death-charge when a mortal wound obliterates his fear of man,
leaving only his fear of death. But this grizzly, native to these
uninhabited wilds, had no fear of man to forget. He did not know what
man was, and he had not learned the death that dwells in the shining
weapon he carries in his arms. No trappers mushed through his snows of
s