a stage road but unlike a traveled road, ending in a bunch
of underwood and brush about a hundred yards ahead.

Above the ledge of the rocks was a steep declivity of loose shale
sprinkled over with large and small boulders of radically different
formations, and in no manner resembling the friable, uncertain bed upon
which they rested.

These boulders undoubtedly showed the result of the grinding and
polishing of an ancient, slow-moving glacier, but some other force had
deposited them in the present position.

"He's in tha'," whispered Pete.

"Who, the wild mountain man?" I asked.

"No," answered my guide, "th' grizzly."

"The what?" I almost shouted.

"Th' grizzly," answered Pete; "what do you think we've been following?"

"Black-tailed deer," I said softly, with my eyes glued on the thicket.

"Well, tenderfoot, here's the trail of that tha' _deer_, and he hain't
been gone by here mor'n nor a week ago, nuther."

I looked and there in the soft mud was the print of a foot, a
human-looking foot, but for the evenness in the length of the toes and
the sharpness and length of the toe nails. Yes, there was another
difference, and that was the size. It was the footprint of a savage
Hercules, the track of an enormous grizzly bear, and the soft mud that
had dripped from the big foot was still undried on the leaves and grass
when Pete pointed it out to me.

"Well, Pete, don't forget your promise that I am to have first shot at
all big game," I whispered with my best effort at coolness, but my heart
was thumping against my ribs at a terrific rate.

"But--why, bless you old man!" I whispered excitedly as I looked at my
gun, "I am armed only with a shotgun."

"Tha's all right," replied the big trapper complacently; then, with a
quick motion, he whipped out his keen-edged knife and snatching one of
my cartridges he severed the shell neatly between the two wads which
separated the powder and shot; that is, a wad in each piece of the
cartridge was exposed by the cut.

Guided by the faint longitudinal seam where the edges of the colored
paper join on the shell, Big Pete carefully fitted the two parts of the
cartridge together exactly as they were before being cut apart. Breaking
my gun, he slipped the mutilated ammunition into the unchoked barrel.

"Tha'," he grunted, "tha's better than a bullet at short range, an'll
tar a hole in old Ephraim big enough to put your arm through."

He cut two more in the same manner, say