The woman had not seen him. He was a silent man by long habit; accustomed to saying nothing, he said nothing now. But instantly aiming from the hip with a wondrous skill and a perfect mastery of the weapon, and indeed it was a short range for so huge a target, he pumped bullet after bullet from his heavy Winchester into the evil monarch of the mountains. The first shot did for him, but making assurance doubly and trebly sure, he fired again and again. Satisfied at last that the bear was dead, and observing that he had fallen upon the clothes of the bather, he turned, descended the stream for a few yards until he came to a place where it was easily fordable, stepped through it without a glance toward the woman shivering in the water, whose sensation, so far as a mere man could, he thoroughly understood and appreciated, and whose modesty he fain would spare, having not forgotten to be a gentleman in five years of his own society--high test of quality, that. He climbed out upon the bank, up-rooted a small tree, rolled the bear clear of the heap of woman's clothing and marched straight ahead of him up the cañon and around the bend. Thereafter, being a man, he did not faint or fall, but completely unnerved he leaned against the cañon wall, dropped his gun at his feet and stood there trembling mightily, sweat bedewing his forehead, and the sweat had not come from his exertions. In one moment the whole even tenor of his life was changed. The one glimpse he had got of those white shoulders, that pallid face, that golden head raised from the water had swept him back five years. He had seen once more in the solitude a woman. Other women he had seen at a distance and avoided in his yearly visits to the settlements of course; these had passed him by remotely, but here he was brought in touch intimately with humanity. He who had taken life had saved it. A woman had sent him forth, was a woman to call him back?