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 an attempt at retaliation. Next morning they followed its tracks
in the snow, and found it a quarter or a mile away. It was near a pine
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 shipping on a New Bedford whaler
which had touched at one of the Puget Sound ports. The whaler went up
to a part of Alaska where bears were very plentiful and bold. One day a
couple of boats' crews landed; and the men, who were armed only with an
occasional harpoon or lance, scattered over the beach, one of them,
a Frenchman, wading into the water after shell-fish. Suddenly a bear
emerged from some bushes and charged among the astonished sailors, who
scattered in every direction; but the bear, said Woody, "just had it in
for that Frenchman," and went straight at him. Shrieking with terror
he retreated up to his neck in the water; but the bear plunged in after
him, caught him, and disembowelled him. One of the Yankee mates then
fired a bomb lance into the bear's hips, and the savage beast hobbled
off into the dense cover of the low scrub, where the enraged sailor folk
were unable to get at it.

The truth is that while the grisly generally avoids a battle if
possible, and often acts with great cowardice, it is never safe to take
liberties