Balser then called off the dogs, and Tom, as proud as the President of the United States, held the gun within a yard of the bear’s head and pulled the trigger. The great brute rolled over on his side, his mighty limbs quivered, he uttered a last despairing growl which was piteous—for it was almost a groan—and his fierce, turbulent spirit fled forever. Balser then drew his hunting knife from the bear’s body, cut off the remaining ear, and put it in the pocket of his buckskin coat. The boys were sorely wounded, and Balser said that the bear had squeezed his “insides” out of place. This proved to be true to a certain extent, for when he got home it was found that two of his ribs were broken. The young hunters were only too glad to start homeward, for they had seen quite enough of the one-eared bear for one day. After walking in silence a short distance down the river, Balser said to Tom:— “I’ll never again say anything bad about your hatchet. It saved my life to-day, and was worth all the guns in the world in such a fight as we have just gone through.” Tom laughed, but was kind-hearted enough not to say, “I told you so.” You may imagine the fright the boys gave their parents when they arrived home wounded, limping, and blood-stained; but soon all was told, and Balser and Tom were the heroes of the settlement. They had killed the most dangerous animal that had ever lived on Blue River, and had conquered where old and experienced hunters had failed. The huge carcass of the bear was brought home that evening, and when the skin was removed, his backbone was found to have been cut almost through by Tom’s hatchet. When they cut the bear open somebody said he had two galls, and that fact, it was claimed, accounted for his fierceness. Where the bear had sprung from when the boys first saw him in the forest, or how he had managed to disappear into the ground at the top of the hill was never satisfactorily explained. Some settlers insisted that he had not been inhabited by an evil spirit, else the boys could not have killed him, but others clung to the belief with even greater faith and persistency. [Illustration: “Balser rushed into the fight.”] Liney went every day to see Balser, who was confined to his bed for a fortnight. One day, while she was sitting by him, and no one else was in the room, he asked her to hand him his buckskin jacket; the one he had worn on the day of the bear fight. The jacket was almost in shreds from the frightful claws of the bear, and tears came to the girl’s eyes as she placed it on the bed. Balser put his hand into one of the deep pockets, and, drawing out the bear’s ear, handed it to Liney, saying:— “I cut this off for you because I like you.” The girl took the bear’s ear, blushed a deep red, thanked him, and murmured:— “And I will keep it, ugly as it is, because I—because—I—like you.” CHAPTER V. THE WOLF HUNT.