d or smelt
the bear, for he snorted, wheeled and broke into a gallop. "Run!" Angus
yelled. "Get behind that eating-camp. Try to climb it, quick!" And not
having time for more words he dropped from his perch, lit sprawling
alongside his rifle, seized it, and jumped around the corner into the
open in the wake of the grizzly, his hand hooked into the lever, while a
long soft-nose snicked home in the chamber.

The girl, now fully alive to her danger, was running for the corner of
the eating camp, and the grizzly, halfway between, was after her. So
much Angus saw at a glance, and then he caught the lumbering but swift
bulk fair center with the bead, and unhooked.

With the high-pitched, smacking voice of the rifle mingled the roar of
the wounded grizzly. He went heels over head like a shot rabbit, came on
his feet again facing the gun, took a second bullet as if it had been a
pellet of bird-shot, and coughing out a fighting roar that seemed to
hold all the bestial ferocity of the ages, came for Angus like a furry
tornado.

There is this about a grizzly which entitles him to respect: When he
charges, he charges home. This fact Angus knew very well. The bear was a
scant forty yards away. Angus caught the center of him with his sights,
and began to pump steadily. His entire attention was concentrated on
holding the sights, and otherwise the gun seemed to shoot itself.
Missing was next to impossible at that range, but so also was choice of
aim. "When anything's comin' for you close up," Rennie had once advised
him, "don't try to hit nowhere's special, but just hold plum' center and
keep shootin'." While Angus did not consciously remember this advice, he
followed it, with a dull wonder that the stream of soft-noses tearing
through the great brute's vitals did not stop him. His last shot was
fired at ten feet, and the hammer clicked down on an empty chamber. As
the brown bulk hurled itself upon him, he lunged the rifle barrel with
all his force into the yawning, white-tusked, red mouth. But as he tried
to leap aside a huge paw blurred for an instant before his eyes and then
blotted out the world. He went down, crushed and smothered as by the
weight of mountains.

CHAPTER XV

FAITH WINTON TURNS UP

Angus came out of the darkness slowly with the weight still upon him.
There was a strange, salt taste in his mouth and a rank smell in his
nostrils. His head seemed pillowed, but his eyelids were gummed, and
when he threw