n him from behind. As he turned it seized his rifle in its jaws.
He wrenched the rifle round, while the bear still gripped it, and pulled
trigger, sending a bullet into its shoulder; whereupon it struck him with
its paw, and knocked him over the rocks. By good luck he fell in a
snow-bank and was not hurt in the least. Meanwhile the bear went on and
they never got it.

Once he had an experience with a bear which showed a very curious mixture
of rashness and cowardice. He and a companion were camped in a little
teepee or wigwam, with a bright fire in front of it, lighting up the
night. There was an inch of snow on the ground. Just after they went to
bed a grizzly came close to camp. Their dog rushed out and they could hear
it bark round in the darkness for nearly an hour; then the bear drove it
off and came right into camp. It went close to the fire, picking up the
scraps of meat and bread, pulled a haunch of venison down from a tree, and
passed and repassed in front of the teepee, paying no heed whatever to the
two men, who crouched in the doorway talking to one another. Once it
passed so close that Woody could almost have touched it. Finally his
companion fired into it, and off it ran, badly wounded, without any
attempt at retaliation. The next morning they followed its tracks in the
snow, and finally found it a quarter of a mile away. It was near a
pine-tree, and had buried itself under the loose earth, pine-needles, and
snow; Woody's companion almost walked over it, and putting his rifle to
its ear blew out its brains.

In all his experience Woody had personally seen but four men who were
badly mauled by bears. Three of these were merely wounded. One was bitten
terribly in the back. Another had an arm partially chewed off. The third
was a man named George Dow, and the accident happened to him on the
Yellowstone about the year 1878. He was with a pack animal at the time,
leading it on a trail through a wood. Seeing a big she-bear with cubs he
yelled at her; whereat she ran away, but only to cache her cubs, and in a
minute, having hidden them, came racing back at him. His pack animal being
slow, he started to climb a tree; but before he could get far enough up
she caught him, almost biting a piece out of the calf of his leg, pulled
him down, bit and cuffed him two or three times, and then went on her way.

The only time Woody ever saw a man killed by a bear was once when he had
given a touch of variety to his life by s