usion and anger, he had forgotten to
do so; and the only load that the gun contained was that in the barrel,
thrown in automatically when the last empty shell was ejected.

XVIII

Several seasons before there had been a fatality on the hillside above
Creek Despair. An ancient spruce tree, one that had watched the forest
drama for uncounted years, whose tall head lifted above all the
surrounding forest and who had known the silence and the snow of a
hundred winters, had languished, withered and died from sheer old age.
For some seasons it had stood in its place, silent and grim and majestic
in death. On the day that the three hunters emerged on their snowshoes
in search of meat for their depleted larder, the wind pressed gently
against it. Because its trunk was rotted away it swayed and fell
heavily.

There was nothing particularly memorable in this. All trees die; all of
them fall at last. Its particular significance lay in the fact that as
it shattered down, sliding a distance on the steep hillside, it scraped
the snow from the mouth of a winter lair of a scarcely less venerable
forest inhabitant,--a savage, long-clawed, gray-furred grizzly bear.

The creature had gone into hibernation weeks before: he was deep in the
cold-trance--that mysterious coma of which the wisest naturalists have
no real knowledge--when the tree fell. He hadn't in the least counted
on being disturbed until the leaves budded out in spring. He had filled
his belly well, crawled into a long, narrow cavern in the rock, the snow
had sifted down and sealed him in, his bodily heat had warmed to a
sufficient degree the little alcove in the cavern that he occupied, his
blood temperature had dropped down and his breathing had almost ceased,
and he had lain in a deep, strange stupor, oblivious to the passage of
time. And he felt the rage known to all sleepy men on being awakened.

The grizzly is a particularly crafty, intelligent animal--on the
intellectual plane of the dog and elephant--and he had chosen his
winter lair with special purpose in mind of a long and uninterrupted
sleep. The cavern mouth was so well concealed that even the sharp eyes
of the wild creatures, passing up and down the creek hardly a hundred
feet away, never guessed its existence. The cavern maw had been large
once, for all to see, but an avalanche had passed over it. Tons of
snow, picking up a great cargo of rocks and dirt that no stream dredge
in the world cou