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142 MOOSE HUNTING

me, unless I did some smart dodging or record sprinting,
I should get some nasty bumps from his horns before I
could reach the shelter of the timber. But my fore-
bodings were groundless. The bull came almost to the
edge of the timber, giving a fleeting glimpse of great
waving horns, and then evidently could see me plain
enough to discover his mistake. In a few minutes he
decided I was not a worthy foe and departed in a leisurely
manner, but still giving defiant grunts. I did not attempt
to call him back !

Later on it transpired that this same bull had been
down in the timber below where we had first seen the
bear, and he it was that gave the bear his fright. We
also discovered that he had turned sharply off his course
and come in our direction about the time the shots
were fired. Of course, as we were in a gulch when
the shooting took place, the sounds that reached the
bull would be more or less muffled and not by any
means the sharp, decisive cracks they otherwise would
have been.

Doubtless, after having heard so much about the bear
you would like to know whether we ever recovered him
or not. It is with great regret that I have to relate we
did not, though we made most strenuous efforts to do so.
For some three miles we stuck to his track, expecting
every instant to find him. Time after time we came on
places where he had stopped for short rests, but he kept
to the thick timber nearly always, and invariably heard
us coming before a final shot could be got in. The poor
brute was in a bad way: so bad that a wandering coyote,
who happened to cross his track and so got a sniff of
the blood, turned to follow him, as he knew he was doomed.
We could also see camp robbers—a species of jay—
flitting along after him, but eventually we lost all trace
of him. He worked his way farther and farther down
the mountain and at last got into a valley where there
was no snow and a dense growth of willows. Darkness
caught us while we were slowly tracking him by the few
traces of blood that were to be found, and we had to