logs. The wound healed at last, but he never forgot that experience,
and thenceforth the pungent smell of man and iron, even without the gun
smell, never failed to enrage him.

Many experiences had taught him that it is better to run if he only
smelled the hunter or heard him far away, but to fight desperately if
the man was close at hand. And the cow-boys soon came to know that the
Upper Meteetsee was the range of a Bear that was better let alone.




II.

One day after a long absence Wahb came into the lower part of his
range, and saw to his surprise one of the wooden dens that men make for
themselves. As he came around to get the wind, he sensed the taint that
never failed to infuriate him now, and a moment later he heard a loud
_bang_ and felt a stinging shock in his left hind leg, the old stiff
leg. He wheeled about, in time to see a man running toward the new-made
shanty. Had the shot been in his shoulder Wahb would have been helpless,
but it was not.

Mighty arms that could toss pine logs like broomsticks, paws that with
one tap could crush the biggest Bull upon the range, claws that could
tear huge slabs of rock from the mountain-side--what was even the deadly
rifle to them!

When the man's partner came home that night he found him on the reddened
shanty floor. The bloody trail from outside and a shaky, scribbled note