sence Wahb came into the lower part of his range,
and saw to his surprise one of the wooden dens that men make for
themselves. As he came around to get the wind, he sensed the taint that
never failed to infuriate him now, and a moment later he heard a loud
_bang_ and felt a stinging shock in his left hind leg, the old stiff leg.
He wheeled about, in time to see a man running toward the new-made shanty.
Had the shot been in his shoulder Wahb would have been helpless, but it was
not.

* * * * *

Mighty arms that could toss pine logs like broomsticks, paws that with one
tap could crush the biggest Bull upon the range, claws that could tear huge
slabs of rock from the mountain-side--what was even the deadly rifle to
them!

* * * * *

When the man's partner came home that night he found him on the reddened
shanty floor. The bloody trail from outside and a shaky, scribbled note on
the back of a paper novel told the tale.

It was Wahb done it. I seen him by the spring and wounded him. I
tried to git on the shanty, but he ketched me. My God, how I
suffer!
JACK.

[Illustration]

It was all fair. The man had invaded the Bear's country, had tried to take
the Bear's life, and had lost his own. But Jack's partner swore he would
kill that Bear.

He took up the trail and followed it up the canyon, and there bushwhacked
and hunted day after day. He put out baits and traps, and at length one day
he heard a _crash_, _clatter_, _thump_, and a huge rock bounded down a bank
into a wood, scaring out a couple of deer that floated away like
thistle-down. Miller thought at first that it was a land-slide; but he soon
knew that it was Wahb that had rolled the boulder over merely for the sake
of two or three ants beneath it.

[Illustration]

The wind had not betrayed him, so on peering through the bush Miller saw
the great Bear as he fed, favoring his left hind leg and growling sullenly
to himself at a fresh twinge of pain. Miller steadied himself, and thought,
"Here goes a finisher or a dead miss." He gave a sharp whistle, the Bear
stopped every move, and, as he stood with ears acock, the man fired at his
head.

But at that moment the great shaggy head moved, only an infuriating scratch
was given, the smoke betrayed the man's place, and the Grizzly made savage,
three-legged h