carry his hide.
Eight and ten balls were sometimes required, to kill him; he would run
a mile and more, after being shot through the heart; he feared nothing.
Captain Lewis declared that he would rather fight two Indians at once,
than one "white bear." No such an animal was known in Kentucky.

The great grizzly usually lurked in the willows, wild-plum trees and
other brush of the stream courses. Here he made his bed, and from here
he charged without warning--afraid not at all of the two-legged enemy
and their single-shot, muzzle-loading flint-lock rifles. In spite of
his size, he was marvelously quick. Besides, he had a short temper.

Hugh Glass was making his way, this August evening, amidst the tangle
of wild plums, berry bushes, and willows along the bank of the Grand.
Suddenly he had burst out into a small clearing--a bear's "nest" made
by crushing the brush in a circle: and the bear was at home, had heard
him coming.

More than that, it was an old she-bear, and a mother bear, lying with
her two cubs upon the twigs and sand. Hugh Glass, a careless though a
skilled hunter, had met with a surprise. Before he had time to spring
back or even to set the hair-trigger of his rifle, she was towering
over him: a huge yellowish bulk whose deep-set piggish little eyes
glowed greenish with rage, whose white tusks gleamed in a snarling,
dripping red mouth, whose stout arms (thicker than his calves) reached
for him with their long curved claws.

This alarming sight he saw--and then she grabbed him, with a stroke
that nearly scalped him; drew him in to her, lifted him off the ground
to hug him, bit him in the throat, and hurling him flat tore a mouthful
of flesh from him and gave it to her cubs!

Horrible! Was he to be eaten alive, like a deer? Evidently she looked
upon him as a species of animal that might be a tidbit for her family.
When she turned to call her cubs and give them the meat she slightly
removed her weight from him. With a writhe he scrambled to get away.
No use. She was after him at once; so were the cubs, as eager as she.
They did not mean that their supper should escape. The whole family
commenced to maul him. The mother seized him by the shoulder and
straddled him; she bit, the two cubs bit and raked. He was only a toy
to them, and being rapidly gashed to ribbons he would have died then
and there had not his shouts and the growling of the bears brought help.

First, his hunting partner arrive