es swelled, the stiff
hair on his neck and shoulders stood straight up, his eyes went
crimson--and without a sound he charged across the wallow.

When the bulls of the caribou kin fight each other, the weapons of
their sole dependence are their antlers. But when they fight alien
enemies they are wont to hold their heads high and strike with the
battering, knife-edged weapons of their fore-hoofs. The bear, crouched
upon his quivering prey, was too absorbed and too scornful to look for
any assault. The bull was upon him, therefore, before he had time to
guard his exposed flank. From the corner of his eye, he saw a big
glistening shape which reared suddenly above him, and, clever boxer
that he was, he threw up a ponderous forearm to parry the blow. But he
was too late. With all the force of some seven hundred pounds of
rage, avenging rage, behind him, these great hoofs, with their cutting
edges, came down upon his side, smashing in several ribs, and gashing
a wide wound down into his loins. The shock was so terrific that his
own counter stroke, usually so swift and unerring, went wild
altogether, and he was sent rolling clear of the body of his prey.

Instantly upon delivering his stroke, the white bull had pranced
lightly aside, knowing well enough the swift and deadly effectiveness
of a bear's paw. But he struck yet again, almost, it seemed, in the
same breath, and just as the bear was struggling up upon his haunches.
Frantically, out of his astonishment, fury, and pain, the bear
attempted to guard. He succeeded, indeed, in warding off those deadly
hoofs from his flank; but he caught an almost disabling blow on the
point of the left shoulder, putting his left forearm out of business.
With a squawling grunt he swung about upon his haunches, bringing his
right toward the enemy, and sat up, savagely but anxiously defensive.

Sore wounded though he was, the bear was not yet beaten. One fair
buffet of his right paw, could he but land it in the proper place,--on
nose, or neck, or leg--might yet give him the victory, and let him
crawl off to nurse his hurts in some dense covert, leaving his broken
foe to die in the wallow. But the white bull, though he had underrated
his former antagonist, was in no danger of misprizing this one. He was
now as wary as he had, in the previous case, been rash. Moreover, he
had had a dreadful object lesson in the power of the bear's paw. The
body of the cow before him kept him from forgetting.