pouch, made a cup of coffee and
silently ate his supper, and Boston began to comprehend that there was
a reason for his refusal to eat while the stranger was in camp. But it
was useless to try to make Doctor Tom talk until he had smoked, and
Boston waited patiently.

At last Doctor Tom said, abruptly, "You know um?" Boston replied that
he did not know the stranger, told briefly how he came into camp, and
by adroit questioning drew, in laconic sentences, a story from the
taciturn Indian.

The man was a hunter, who had been a famous bear-killer many years ago.
In the days of muzzle-loaders he had two rifles, one of which was
always carried for him by an Indian whom he hired for that service. If
his first shot failed to kill, he handed the empty rifle to the Indian
to exchange for the second weapon, and usually brought down his bear
while the Indian was reloading. A member of Doctor Tom's tribe,
probably a relative, was gun-bearer for the hunter on one of his
expeditions. They ran across a she-bear with cubs and the hunter shot
her, but the wound only stung her, and she rushed fiercely upon him.
The second shot did not stop her, and the hunter and the Indian had to
turn and run for their lives.

But a Grizzly in a rage can outrun any man in a long race, and the
angry she-bear rapidly overhauled her foes. The white man and the
Indian ran side by side, although the Indian could have outstripped
him. The red man had his knife in hand ready for the moment when the
bear should seize one of them. The white man glanced over his
shoulder, saw the bear lurching along within one jump of them, seized
the Indian by the shoulders and hurled him backward into the very jaws
of the furious brute. The white man escaped with his life, and the
Indian lived just long enough to tell those who found him, a torn and
bloody mass of flesh and broken bones, how he had been sacrificed to a
coward's love of life.

Doctor Tom told this in his uncouth jargon of English and Chinook,
without a tremor, but his black eyes glowed with a gleam of light not
reflected from the dying embers of the campfire, and Boston was glad
that the stranger had gone. Then he knew why Doctor Tom sat silently
apart and would taste no food while the stranger was in camp. The
stranger might accept Boston's hospitality and eat salt with him, but
the Indian would not acknowledge by any act that he, Doctor Tom, had
any interest in that camp, or bind himself by Ind