the marks was yet unbending. Lan rode his hunting pony on the trail.
It sniffed and stepped nervously, for it knew as well as the rider
that a Grizzly family was near. They came to a terrace leading to an
open upland. Twenty feet on this side of it Lan slipped to the ground,
dropped the reins, the well-known sign to the pony that he must stand
at that spot, then cocked his rifle and climbed the bank. At the top
he went with yet greater caution, and soon saw an old Grizzly with her
two cubs. She was lying down some fifty yards away and afforded a poor
shot; he fired at what seemed to be the shoulder. The aim was true,
but the Bear got only a flesh-wound. She sprang to her feet and made
for the place where the puff of smoke arose. The Bear had fifty yards
to cover, the man had fifteen, but she came racing down the bank
before he was fairly on the horse, and for a hundred yards the pony
bounded in terror while the old Grizzly ran almost alongside, striking
at him and missing by a scant hair's-breadth each time. 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,