This was true enough. Dave had heard of them also. A thirty-thirty is a powerful weapon, but it isn't an elephant gun. They hurried on, Dave very anxious to watch the execution that would shortly ensue if whatever animal had cried from the trap was still alive. Such things were only the day's work to Hudson, but Dave felt a little tingle of anticipation. And the thought damned him beyond redemption. But instead of the joy of killing a cowering, terror-stricken animal, helpless in the trap, the wilderness had made other plans for Hudson and Dave. They hastened about the impenetrable wall of brush, and in one glance they knew that more urgent business awaited them. The whole picture loomed suddenly before their eyes. There was no wolf in the trap. The steel had sprung, certainly, but only a hideous fragment of a foot remained between the jaws. The bone had been broken sharply off, as a man might break a match in his fingers. There was no living wolf for Hudson to execute with his killer gun. Life had gone out of the gray body many minutes before. The two men saw all these things as a background only,--dim details about the central figure. But the thing that froze them in their tracks with terror was the great, gray form of the Killer, not twenty feet distant, beside the mangled body of the wolf. The events that followed thereafter came in such quick succession as to seem simultaneous. For one fraction of an instant all three figures stood motionless, the two men staring, the grizzly half-leaning over his prey, his head turned, his little red eyes full of hatred. Too many times this night he had missed his game. It was the same intrusion that had angered him before,--slight figures to break to pieces with one blow. Perhaps--for no man may trace fully the mental processes of animals--his fury fully transcended the fear that he must have instinctively felt; at least, he did not even attempt to flee. He uttered one hoarse, savage note, a sound in which all his hatred and his fury and his savage power were made manifest, whirled with incredible speed, and charged. The lunge seemed only a swift passing of gray light. No eye could believe that the vast form could move with such swiftness. There was little impression of an actual leap. Rather it was just a blow; the great form, huddled over the dead wolf, had simply reached the full distance to Hudson. The man did not even have time to turn. There was no defense; his killer-gun was strapped on his back, and even if it had been in his hands, its little bullet would not have mattered the sting of a bee in honey-robbing. The only possible chance of breaking that deadly charge lay in the thirty-thirty deer rifle in Dave's arms; but the craven who held it did not even fire. He was standing just below the outstretched limb of a tree, and the weapon fell from his hands as he swung up into the limb. The fact that Hudson stood weaponless, ten feet away in the clearing, did not deter him in the least.