70 FIFTY YEARS IN WESTERN CANADA

of the gun stuck! It would not work! This spelt
death to him; for what is a single ball to a grizzly,
even in the heart?®

Unable to reload his arm, the rash fellow could do
nothing but rush away as fast as his legs would carry
him, with the enraged beast upon his heels. Then,
thinking in his distress of finding some kind of precari-
ous protection in a big stump which emerged from the
prairie, he started to run around it, keeping it always
between himself and his would-be executioner, when,
dizzy and frightened, he tumbled down and, at the
same moment was belaboured by the growling fury
which, with its terrible claws, ploughed bloody fur-
rows into his breast, cut off his nose, broke his arms,
tearing off one of his hands, until the poor man having
ceased to give any sign of life, the brute imagined that
he had done him to death, and left him a bloody mass of
flesh and broken bones.

Yet the man survived! What wonder, then, if his
fellow Indians were wondering whether he was not
possessed of magic powers?

It was on a Saturday that Father Morice and crew
learnt of this. They spent the Sunday in the hut of a
good old soul, an Indian called Nelli, and the following
Monday afternoon saw them on the clear waters of
Cambie Lake. The next day, September 19, the
weather was simply perfect, and the azure of the skies
seemed to be mirrored in the beautiful sheet of water,
over which the missionary party was peacefully gliding,
when their canoe slowed down and the priest, who
happened to be resting in the middle of the little craft,

® One of them is known to have survived twenty minutes and swum
half a mile after having received ten bullets in its body, four of which had
transpierced its lungs and two had gone into its heart (Art. “Bear” in
American Encyclopedia).