"But before they left I learned in a vague sort of way how the whole thing had come about. It appeared that the poor fellow had gone up to Caribou Mountain to shoot some big game, and had taken the half-breed along as a guide. The luck had been bad, nothing had been shot, or even sighted, and the two of them had started for home. "One day, however, the same day that he met us, on turning the corner of a rock, the half-breed being a little distance away, the hunter saw a bear. Not knowing much of the bears in this part of the world, it simply seemed to him like a smaller species, and, dropping on one knee he pumped three shots into the brute and it fell a few steps away. Then, foolishly laying his rifle down and taking out his hunting knife, he walked up to the beast to see what his prize was like. "Stooping down, he saw that it was but a large well-grown cub, and he stood looking at it for a moment, when a sudden feeling of danger flashed into his mind. A cub--then the old bears must be near by; he turned swiftly to get and reload his rifle. As he turned, he saw, charging upon him from the direction in which his rifle was lying, the mother of the cub. The bear, which was coming like an express train, was not seventy-five yards away, and the rifle was ten. "Then the fellow did what seemed to me a mighty plucky thing. He knew he could not outstrip the bear, and he was sure that if he were treed that would be the end of it, so instead of running from the bear he tore up the hill to meet her face to face." "Did he expect to get to the rifle first?" asked Roger, full of interest. "He thought that when the bear saw him charging for her it would cause her to pause, and a few seconds' delay would enable him to get his rifle and he ran a chance of dropping her in her tracks. It was his only hope. But the brute never stopped in her rush, and when the hunter reached the gun she was only twenty feet away. "Bringing the rifle to his shoulder with a single motion, he pumped three steel-jacketed bullets into her at point-blank distance, then, throwing his rifle up, he caught it by the barrel, prepared to club the bear over the head with an aim to catch her in the eyes and blind her, so that he could make a get-away." "That was plucky," said the boy, "to face a mad bear with a clubbed gun." "Plucky enough, but foolish. He knew nothing of the strength of a bear, and even as he brought down the clubbed rifle with all his force, she rose suddenly upon her hind legs and swept away the descending gun with her paw. I found it later, bent almost double with the force of that blow. The hunter jumped aside, but as the bear rushed past she threw out her other paw with claws outstretched, which, catching him on the neck, laid open his right arm from shoulder to wrist.