rounds and had returned to his lodging apartments during the
night, so we now thought that we would soon make sure of our game. We
located the spot the best we could where we thought Bruin was
sleeping and began to cautiously work our way in from opposite sides.
It only took a short time to work our way into the jam sufficiently
to locate a large root, where Bruin's tracks showed plainly that he
was sleeping under this root. We continued to work our way up closer
to the root with gun in hand for ready action. But still Bruin did
not show up, neither could we hear the least bit of a noise from him.

When we were within a few feet of the root, Mr. Howard on one side
and the writer on the other side, suddenly, without any warning
whatever, Bruin came out of his hole like a shot out of a gun and
nearly landed on Mr. Howard, who sprang backwards to escape him. Mr.
Howard's feet became tangled in the thick brush, he fell backwards
and before he could regain his feet, Bruin had gone over the brow of
the ridge, into the laurel out of sight. Mr. Howard was not able to
get in a shot at Bruin, as I was on the other side of the root and on
higher ground, I managed to empty both barrels of my rifle at him
through the thick brush, but Bruin went on down the hill, through the
laurel, apparently unhurt.

After following the trail of Bruin for some distance, we began, now
and then, to find a little blood, where the bear had crawled over a
log or rubbed against the laurel. We followed him until we found one
or two places where he had broken down a few laurel and scratched
about in trying to make a bed, so we thought the better plan was to
let Bruin go for the night and let him make his bed.

But we did not go to camp empty handed for good luck favored Mr.
Howard in killing a good, big deer on our way to the shanty. After
leaving the trail of the bear, we followed up a spur of the main
ridge that led to camp, Mr. Howard going up one side of the spur
while I took the other spur. Just before reaching the top of the
spur, I heard Mr. Howard shoot and in a few minutes I heard him
shouting for help. When I got across the ridge to where he was, I
found him dressing a good sized buck. As it was getting dark we lost
no time in taking the entrails out of the deer, cutting a withe with
a hook, which we hooked into the lower jaw of the deer. We hooked
ourselves to the withe and made lively tracks to the shanty, where we
could talk and laugh of th