pring; no woodsman rode his winding trails. True, from the first
instant that the human smell had reached him on the wind he had been
disturbed and discomfited; yet it was not grizzly nature to yield his
den without a fight. The sight of the wolf--known to him of old--only
wakened an added rage in his fierce heart.

The wolf met him at his first leap, springing with noble courage at his
grizzled throat; and the bear paused in his charge to strike him away.
He lashed out with his great forepaw; and if that blow had gone straight
home the ribs of the wolf would have been smashed flat on his heart and
lungs. The tough trunk of a young spruce would have been broken as
quickly under that terrible, blasting full-stroke of a grizzly. The
largest grizzly weighs but a thousand pounds, but that weight is simple
fiber and iron muscle, of a might incredible to any one but the woodsmen
who know this mountain king in his native haunts. But Fenris whipped
aside, and the paw missed him.

Immediately the wolf sprang in again, with a courage scarcely compatible
with lupine characteristics, ready to wage this unequal battle to the
death. But his brave fight was tragically hopeless. For all that his
hundred and fifty pounds were, every ounce, lightning muscle and vibrant
sinew, it was as if a gopher had waged war with a lynx. Yet by the law
of his wild heart he could not turn and flee. His master--his stalwart
god whose words thrilled him to the uttermost depths--had given his
orders, and he must obey them to the end.

The second blow missed him also, but the third caught a small shrub that
grew twenty feet beyond the dying fire. The shrub snapped off under the
blow, and its branchy end smote the wolf across the head and neck. As if
struck by a tornado he was hurled into the air, and curtailed and
indirect though the blow was, he sprawled down stunned and insensible in
the grass. The bear paused one instant; then lunged forth again.

But the breath in which the wolf had stayed the charge had given Ben his
chance. With a swift motion of his arm he had projected the single rifle
shell into the chamber of the weapon. The stock snapped to his shoulder;
and his keen, glittering eyes sought the sights.

XXVIII

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 ren