and
they followed them noiselessly over the yielding carpet of moss and
pine-needles, to an elk-trail leading into a tangled thicket of young
spruces.

Suddenly Merrifield sank on one knee, turning half round, his face
aflame with excitement. Roosevelt strode silently past him, his gun
"at the ready."

There, not ten steps off, was the great bear slowly rising from his
bed among the young spruces. He had heard the hunters and reared
himself on his haunches. Seeing them, he dropped again on all-fours,
and the shaggy hair on his neck and shoulders bristled as he turned
toward them.

Roosevelt aimed fairly between the small, glittering eyes, and fired.

Doubtless my face was pretty white [Roosevelt wrote "Bamie"
a week later,] but the blue barrel was as steady as a rock
as I glanced along it until I could see the top of the bead
fairly between his two sinister-looking eyes; as I pulled
the trigger I jumped aside out of the smoke, to be ready if
he charged, but it was needless, for the great brute was
struggling in his death agony, and as you will see when I
bring home his skin, the bullet hole was as exactly between
his eyes as if I had measured the distance with a
carpenter's rule.

At last, one cool morning, when the branches of the evergreens were
laden with the feathery snow that had fallen overnight, the hunters
struck camp, and in single file, with the pack-ponies laden with the
trophies of the hunt, moved down through the woods and across the
canyons to the edge of the great table-land, then slowly down the
steep slope to its foot, where they found the canvas-topped wagon.
Next day they set out on the three-hundred-mile journey home to the
Maltese Cross.

For once I have made a very successful hunting trip
[Roosevelt wrote "Bamie" from Fort McKinney.] I have just
come out of the mountains and will start at once for the
Little Missouri, which I expect to reach in a fortnight,
and a week afterwards will be on my way home. Merrifield
killed two bears and three elk; he has been an invaluable
guide for game, and of course the real credit for the bag
rests with him, for he found most of the animals. But I
really shot well this time. Merrifield, who is a perfectly
fearless and reckless man, has no more regard for a grizzly
bear than he has for a jack-rabbit; the last one he killed,
he wished to merely br