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.
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