biggest puma he had ever
seen."]

Striving to clear his eyes and mouth, his first realization was that
he could not lift his left arm. The next, that he seemed to have
jumped from the frying-pan into the fire. His jaws set themselves
desperately, as he drew the long hunting-knife from his belt and
struggled up to one knee, resolved to at least make his last fight a
good one. Almost over his head, on a limb not six feet distant,
crouched, ready to spring, the biggest puma he had ever seen. At this
new confronting of doom his brain cleared, and his sinews seemed to
stretch with fresh courage. It was hopeless, of course, as he knew,
but his heart refused to recognize the fact. Then he noted with wonder
that not at him at all was the puma looking, but far over his head. He
followed that look, and again his heart sank, this time quite beyond
the reach of hope. There was the grizzly coming headlong down the
slope, foam slavering from his red jaws.

Bewildered, and feeling like a rat in a hole, the hunter tried to slip
around the base of the tree, desperately hoping to gain some post of
vantage whence to get home at least two or three good blows before the
end. But the moment he moved, the grizzly fairly hurled himself
downwards. The hunter jumped aside and wheeled, with his knife lifted,
his disabled left arm against the tree trunk. But in that same
instant, a miracle! Noiselessly the puma's tawny length shot out
overhead and fell upon the bear in the very mid-rush of the charge.

At once it seemed as if some cataclysmic upheaval were in progress.
The air, as it were, went mad with screeches, yells, snarls, and
enormous thick gruntings. The bushes went down on every side. Now the
bear was on top, now the puma. They writhed over and over, and for
some seconds the hunter stared with stupefaction. Then he recovered
his wits. He saw that the puma, for some inexplicable reason, had come
to his help. But he saw, also, that the gigantic grizzly must win.
Instead of slipping off and leaving his ally to destruction, he ran
up, waited a moment for the perfect opportunity, and drove his knife
to the hilt into the very centre of the back of the bear's neck, just
where it joined the skull. Then he sprang aside.

Strangely the noise died away. The huge bulk of the grizzly sank
slowly into a heap, the puma still raking it with the eviscerating
weapons of his hinder claws. A moment more and he seemed to realize
that he had achieved a su