ashion, and the
celebrated Bad Lands ranchman did his killing with a rifle and always
shot for the eye, which was the more remarkable because he was very
near-sighted and wore eyeglasses.

Zeke once met a bear in the mountains near Owen Lake and played his
customary game, but not with complete success. By some extraordinary
bad luck both cartridges in his gun had defective primers, and when he
pulled the triggers he was very much pained and disappointed by the
absence of the usual loud report. It was a critical moment for Zeke.
It took him the thousandth part of a second to grasp the situation and
spring desperately to the right. Another small fraction of a second
was consumed in his unexpected descent to the bottom of an old prospect
hole that was overgrown with brush and had escaped his notice.

Probably that was the only prospect hole in that part of the Sierra
Nevada, and it must have been dug by some half-cracked Forty-niner like
Marshall, who prospected all the way from Yuma to the Columbia. Zeke
vows it was dug by Providence.

The sudden and unaccountable disappearance of the man with a gun
surprised the bear, and he had thrown himself forward and plunged into
the chaparral several yards before he began to catch on to the fact
that Zeke was not before him. As soon as Zeke struck bottom, he looked
up to see if the bear was coming down too, and then he removed the bad
cartridges and quickly inserted two more in his gun. He knew the bear
would smell him out very soon.

In half a minute the bear's snout appeared at the top of the hole. It
disappeared and was at once replaced by the bear's hind legs. Caleb
was coming down stern foremost after the noxious person who had fired
bullets at him. As the bear scrambled down, Zeke aimed just under his
shoulder and sent two handsful of buckshot careering through his vitals
in a diagonal line. The wound was almost instantly fatal, and the bear
came down in a heap at the bottom of the hole, which was about ten or
twelve feet deep.

The excitement being over, Zeke realized that he had been injured in
the fall, and that standing up was painful. He sat down on the bear to
rest and reflect, and to induce reflection he took out his pipe and
lighted it. The flare of the match lighted up the prospect hole, and
Zeke was interested on seeing a good-sized rattlesnake lying dead under
his feet, its head crushed by his boot heel. He had landed on the
snake when he fell in