body of the bear. He was a tall black bearded man, she saw he carried a rifle, he looked neither to the right nor to the left, he did not bestow a glance upon her. She could have cried aloud in thanksgiving for his apparent obliviousness to her as she crouched now neck deep in the benumbing cold. The man stepped on the bank, shook himself like a great dog might have done and marched over to the bear. He up-rooted a small near-by pine, with the ease of a Hercules—and she had time to mark and marvel at it in spite of everything—and then with that as a lever he unconcernedly and easily heaved the body of the monster from off her clothing. She was to learn later what a feat of strength it was to move[Pg 94] that inert carcass weighing much more than half a ton.

[Pg 94]

Thereafter he dropped the pine tree by the side of the dead grizzly and without a backward look tramped swiftly and steadily up the cañon through the trees, turning at the point of it, and was instantly lost to sight. His gentle and generous purpose was obvious even to the frightened, agitated, excited girl.

The woman watched him until he disappeared, a few seconds longer, and then she hurled herself through the water and stepped out upon the shore. Her sweater, which the bear had dragged forward in its advance, lay on top of the rest of her clothes covered with blood. She threw it aside and with nervous, frantic energy, wet, cold, though she was, she jerked on in some fashion enough clothes to cover her nakedness and then with more leisurely order and with necessary care she got the rest of her apparel in its accustomed place upon her body, and then when it was all over she sank down prone and prostrate upon the grass by the carcass of the now harmless monster which had so nearly caused her undoing, and shivered, cried and sobbed as if her heart would break.

She was chilled to the bone by her motionless sojourn, albeit it had been for scarcely more than[Pg 95] a minute, in that icy water, and yet the blood rushed to her brow and face, to every hidden part of her in waves as she thought of it. It was a good thing that she cried, she was not a weeping woman, her tears came slowly as a rule and then came hard. She rather prided herself upon her stoicism, but in this instance the great deeps of her nature had been undermined and the fountains thereof were fain to break forth.

[Pg 95]

How long she lay there, warmth coming gradually to her under the direct rays of the sun, she did not know, and it was a strange 

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