s 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