At last Jim came to the conclusion that no bears would come that night, and as a glance at our sights proved to us that we should probably miss them even if they came, we signalled him to push off, and in a minute the canoe was again fleeting over the waters in breathless silence, the thin line of forest seeming to glide by us while we stood still. An Indian in the bows was looking out for ‘snags ahead’ or shallows, and for my part I had played this game so often before that I had given up hope, and was dreaming of other things. All at once the canoe was violently shaken from stem to stern. ‘D---- the fellow,’ I muttered, ‘I suppose he has run aground,’ and I went on dreaming. Again the canoe trembled under me, and this time I remembered that this was to be the signal for game ahead. At the same moment I noticed that the Siwash’s face was working, and his hands were drawing his Winchester from its case, when my friend crept up to him, and made him understand that if he fired it would hurt him more than the bears, and then at last I saw _them_. Until then the Indian’s body had been in my way, but now they were in full view, standing almost up to their shoulders in the stream, still as stone images in the dark shadow of the overhanging bank, their heads turned over their shoulders looking in our direction, and the long silvery ripples running from their legs down stream. It was lucky for me that night that I carried a Paradox, with which a man can shoot at short ranges as if he were snap-shooting at rabbits in covert, for I had to stand up to get a clean shot, I had not a second to lose, and the canoe rocked horribly under my feet. The big beast of the two fell to my first barrel, sinking where she stood, while her mate got my second barrel in the back as he scrambled up the bank, making good his escape for the moment into the dense scrub. [Illustration: STANDING STILL AS STONE IMAGES] I don’t suppose that the whole incident, from the find until we began to fish up my bear, took a minute, and yet into that minute was crowded a third of the reward for forty days of hard work, short commons and general misery. Is the game worth the candle? I think it is, but I don’t want to persuade any man to be of my way of thinking, nor do I want to convey the impression that all bear hunting is necessarily as grim and miserable as it is in Alaska. But in places where bear hunting is easy, bears are getting scarce (at least, grizzlies are), for their hides bring a good price and there is a bounty upon their scalps as well. The result is that more bears are trapped in one year than would be shot in five under ordinary circumstances. For instance, two brothers whom I know killed thirty-five bears in 1890 within a radius of eighty miles of their cabin. Of course, this sort of thing cannot last.