e
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