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“Well, missing that bear so often took hold of my vitals, and I wasted away. The thing had been carried too far, and it reduced me in flesh faster than an ager. I would see that bear in every thing I did: he hunted me,and that, too, like a devil, which I began to think he was.

“While in this shaky fix, I made preparations to give him a last brush, and be done with it. Having completed everything to my satisfaction, I started at sunrise, and to my great joy, I discovered from the way the dogs run, that theywere near him. Finding his trail was nothing, for that had become as plain to the pack as a turnpike road.

“On we went, and coming on an open country, what should I see but the bear very leisurely ascending a hill, and the dogs close at his heels, either a match for him this time in speed, or else he did not care to get out of their way I don’t know which. But wasn’t he a beauty, though! I loved him like a brother.

“On he went, until he came to a tree, the limbs of which formed a crotch about six feet from the ground. Into this crotch he got and seated himself, the dogs yelling all around it; and there he sat eyeing them as quiet as a pond in low water.

“A greenhorn friend of mine, in company, reached shooting distance before me, and blazed away, hitting the critter in the centre of his forehead. The bear shook his head as the ball struck it, and then walked down from that tree, as gently as a lady would from a carriage.

” ‘Twas a beautiful sight to see him do that he was in such a rage, that he seemed to be as little afraid of the dogs as if they had been sucking pigs; and the dogs warn’t slow in making a ring around him at a respectful distance, I tell you; even Bowieknife himself, stood off. Then the way his eyes flashed! why the fire of them would have singed a cat’s hair; in fact, that bear was in a wrath all over. Only one pup came near him, and he was brushed out so totally with the bear’s left paw, that he entirely disappeared; and that made the old dogs more cautious still. In the mean time, I came up, and taking deliberate aim, as a man should do, at his side, just back of his foreleg,if my gun did not snap,call me a coward, and I won’t take it personal.

“Yes, stranger, it snapped,and I could not find a cap about my person. While in this predicament, I turned round to my fool friend ‘Bill,’ says I, ‘you’re an ass you’re a fool you might as well have tried to kill that bear by barking the tree under his belly, as to have done it by hitting him in the head. Your shot has made a tiger of him; and blast me, if a dog gets killed or wounded when they come to blows, I will stick my knife into your liver, I will .’ My wrath was up. I had lost my caps, my gun had snapped, the fellow with me had fired at the bear’s head, and I expected every moment to see him close in with the dogs and kill a dozen of them at least. In this thing I was mistaken; for the bear leaped over the ring formed by the dogs, and giving a fierce growl, was off the pack, of course, in full cry after him. The run this time was short, for coming to the edge of a lake, the varmint jumped in, and swam to a little island in the lake, which it
reached, just a moment before the dogs.