at seemed to be the shoulder. The aim was true,
but the Bear got only a flesh-wound. She sprang to her feet and made
for the place where the puff of smoke arose. The Bear had fifty yards
to cover, the man had fifteen, but she came racing down the bank
before he was fairly on the horse, and for a hundred yards the pony
bounded in terror while the old Grizzly ran almost alongside, striking
at him and missing by a scant hair's-breadth each time. But the
Grizzly rarely keeps up its great speed for many yards. The horse got
under full headway, and the shaggy mother, falling behind, gave up the
chase and returned to her cubs.

[Illustration: "THE PONY BOUNDED IN TERROR WHILE THE GRIZZLY RAN
ALMOST ALONGSIDE"]

She was a singular old Bear. She had a large patch of white on her
breast, white cheeks and shoulders, graded into the brown elsewhere,
and Lan from this remembered her afterward as the "Pinto." She had
almost caught him that time, and the hunter was ready to believe that
he owed her a grudge.

A week later his chance came. As he passed along the rim of Pocket
Gulch, a small, deep valley with sides of sheer rock in most places,
he saw afar the old Pinto Bear with her two little brown cubs. She was
crossing from one side where the wall was low to another part easy to
climb. As she stopped to drink at the clear stream Lan fired with his
rifle. At the shot Pinto turned on her cubs, and slapping first one,
then the other, she chased them up a tree. Now a second shot struck
her and she charged fiercely up the sloping part of the wall, clearly
recognizing the whole situation and determined to destroy that hunter.
She came snorting up the steep acclivity wounded and raging, only to
receive a final shot in the brain that sent her rolling back to lie
dead at the bottom of Pocket Gulch. The hunter, after waiting to make
sure, moved to the edge and fired another shot into the old one's
body; then reloading, he went cautiously down to the tree where still
were the cubs. They gazed at him with wild seriousness as he
approached them, and when he began to climb they scrambled up higher.
Here one set up a plaintive whining and the other an angry growling,
their outcries increasing as he came nearer.

He took out a stout cord, and noosing them in turn, dragged them to
the ground. One rushed at him and, though little bigger than a cat,
would certainly have done him serious injury had he not held it off
with a forked stick.

After