Jack. His wound healed quickly, but his memory of the rifle smell
continued; it was a dangerous smell, a new and horrible kind of
smoke--one he was destined to know too well; one, indeed, he was soon
to meet again. Jack was wandering down the side of Tallac, following a
sweet odor that called up memories of former joys--the smell of honey,
though he did not know it. A flock of grouse got leisurely out of his
way and flew to a low tree, when he caught a whiff of man smell, then
heard a crack like that which had stung him in the sheep-corral, and
down fell one of the grouse close beside him. He stepped forward to
sniff just as a man also stepped forward from the opposite bushes.
They were within ten feet of each other, and they recognized each
other, for the hunter saw that it was a singed Bear with a wounded
side, and the Bear smelt the rifle-smoke and the leather clothes.
Quick as a Grizzly--that is, quicker than a flash--the Bear reared.
The man sprang backward, tripped and fell, and the Grizzly was upon
him. Face to earth the hunter lay like dead, but, ere he struck, Jack
caught a scent that made him pause. He smelt his victim, and the smell
was the rolling back of curtains or the conjuring up of a past. The
days in the hunter's shanty were forgotten, but the feelings of those
days were ready to take command at the bidding of the nose. His nose
drank deep of a draft that quelled all rage. The Grizzly's humor
changed. He turned and left the hunter quite unharmed.

Oh, blind one with the gun! All he could find in explanation was: "You
kin never tell what a Grizzly will do, but it's good play to lay low
when he has you cornered." It never came into his mind to credit the
shaggy brute with an impulse born of good, and when he told the
sheep-herder of his adventure in the pool, of his hitting high on the
body and of losing the trail in the forest fire--"down by the shack,
when he turned up sudden and had me I thought my last day was come.