He dropped as if a death-blow had struck him, and, clinging to his rifle, crept in among the firs. He flung off the straps of his basket. He lay still a moment and then cautiously got to his knees. Blood was trickling down his hand, but he gave no heed to it. The ball had come from higher ground, towards which he had been walking. The man who had tried to kill him could not have stood more than two hundred feet away. Strong sat, rifle in hand, peering through the fir branches--alert as a panther waiting for its prey. Soon he caught a glimpse of his enemy fleeing between distant tree columns. The sight seemed to fill him with deadly anger. He leaped to his feet, seized his pack-basket, and started swiftly in pursuit of him. He gained the summit of the high ground and saw a broad slash covered with berry bushes and sloping to the flats around Bushrod Creek. A trail cut through it from the edge of the woods near him. He stopped and listened. He could hear the sound of retreating footsteps and could see briers moving some thirty rods down the slash. His heart had shaken off its rage. He was now the cunning, stealthy, determined hunter. He saw a dry, stag-headed pine in the edge of the briers near him and hurried up its shaft like a bear pressed by the dogs. On a dead limb, some thirty feet above ground, he halted and looked away. He could see nothing of his unknown foe. Slowly Strong descended from the dead tree. He had just begun to feel the pain of his wound. Blood was dripping fast from it; he looked like a butcher in the midst of his task. He muttered as he began to roll his sleeve, "G-guess they do inten't' shove me out o' this c-country." He blew as he looked at the wound. "B-Business is p-prosperin'," he went on, as he held one end of a big red handkerchief between his teeth and wound it above the torn muscles and firmly knotted the ends. "W-war!" he muttered, as he went to the near bushes and began to gather spiders' webs. It is to be regretted that for a moment he forgot his promise to Socky and "boiled over" from the heat of his passion. He sat on the ground and with his knife scraped away the blood clots. "D-damn soft-nose bullet!" he muttered, with a serious look, smoothing, down the fibres of torn flesh. He spread the webs upon his wound, and held them close awhile under his great palm. Soon he moistened a lot of tobacco and put it on the webs and held it there. After an hour or so the blood stopped. Then, gradually, he relieved the tension of his handkerchief, and by-and-by used it for a bandage on his wound. He rose and shouldered his pack and began to search for the tracks of his enemy. He soon discovered those of the bear which had fled before him that morning. "S-see here, Strong," he muttered, "th-this won't scurcely do. I arrest you, S. Strong, Esquire. Y-you're my prisoner. T-tryin' t' kill a man--you b-bloodthirsty devil! C-come with me. We'll hunt fer b-bears."