ding 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 mor