Part 13 (1/2)

The bear had had him on his back between her teeth by the thick chest piece of his double-breasted buckskin Except for his face, he seereat brute had drawn the claws of her fore paw

Ba'tiste raised his hands to his face

”Mon dieu!” he asked thickly, fu with both hands, ”what is done to my eyes? Is the fire out? I cannot see!”

Then the -knife fainted because of what his hands felt

Traitors there are a all other classes, men like those who deserted Glass on the Missouri, and Scott on the Platte, and how many others whose treachery will never be known

But Ba'tiste's comrades stayed with him on the banks of the river that flows into the Missouri One cared for the blind ame When the wounded hunter could be moved, they put him in a canoe and hurried down-strea of the rivers At the fur post, the doctor did what he could; but a doctor cannot restore what has been torn away The next spring, Ba'tiste was put on a pack horse and sent to his relatives at the Canadian fur post Here his sistersround his helht not drag so wearily

Ask Ba'tiste whether he agrees with the amateur hunter that bears never attack unless they are attacked, that they would never beco creatures of prey unless the assaults of other creatures taught the the snarl of a baited beast breaks from the lipless face under the veil:

”S--s--sz!--” with a quiver of inexpressible rage ”The bear--it is an animal!--the bear!--it is a beast!--toujours!--the bear!--it is a beast!--always--always!” And his hands clinch

Then he falls to carving of the little wooden anihts into the warp of the Indianbears, or are they the mad freaks of the bear's nature? President Roosevelt tells of two soldiers bitten to death in the South-West; and M L'Abbe Dugast, of St Boniface, Manitoba, incidentally relates an experience almost similar to that of Ba'tiste which occurred in the North-West Lest Ba'tiste's case seem overdrawn, I quote the Abbe's words:

”At a little distance Mada the tents for the night, when all at once Bouvier gave a cry of distress and called to his companions to help hiun and prepared to defend hiainst the attack of an enemy; they hurried to the other side of the ditch to see as thewith

They had no idea that a wild animal would coht; for fire usually has the effect of frightening wild beasts However, almost before the four hunters knehat had happened, they saw their unfortunate coed into the woods by a bear followed by her two cubs She held Bouvier in her claws and struck hiely in the face to stun him As soon as she saw the four ainst her prey, tearing his face with her claws M Lajimoniere, as an intrepid hunter, baited her with the butt end of his gun to o her hold, as he dared not shoot for fear of killing theto save hi choked, cried with all his strength: 'Shoot; I would rather be shot than eaten alive!' M

Lajier as close to the bear as possible, wounding her th was exhausted made a wild attack upon M Lajiun had only one barrel loaded, he ran towards the canoe, where he had a second gun fully charged He had hardly seized it before the bear reached the shore and tried to clier to wound his friend, M Lajimoniere aimed full at her breast and this tier to be feared, Mada the tumult, went to raise the unfortunate Bouvier, as covered ounds and nearly dead The bear had torn the skin from his face with her nails from the roots of his hair to the lower part of his chin His eyes and nose were gone--in fact his features were indiscernible--but he was not mortally injured His wounds were dressed as well as the circumstances would permit, and thus crippled he was carried to the Fort of the Prairies, Madah the journey In time his wounds were successfully healed, but he was blind and infirm to the end of his life He dwelt at the Fort of the Prairies for many years, but when the first missionaries reached Red River in 1818, he persuaded his friends to send him to St Boniface to meet the priests and ended his days in M Provencher's house He e crosses and crucifixes blind as he was, but he neverand such is the nature of the bear And these things are not of the past Wherever long-range repeaters have not put the fear of ressor Even as I write comes word from a little frontier fur post which I visited in 1901, of a seven-year-old boy being waylaid and devoured by a grisly only four miles back from a transcontinental railway This is the second death from the unprovoked attacks of bears within a ust, 1902, when sentier are sagely discussing whether the bear is naturally ferocious or not--whether, in a word, it is altogether _humane to hunt bears_

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 36: In further confirhter, who told ate when the Indian carisly pelt over his shoulder

When he saw her his hands went up to conceal the price he had paid for the pelt]

[Footnote 37: This phase of prairie lifethat every rider of the plains can see any time he has patience to rein up and sit like a statue within field-glass distance of the gopher burrows about nightfall when the badgers are running]

CHAPTER XIII

JOHN COLTER--FREE TRAPPER

Long before sunrise hunters were astir in the mountains

The Croere robbers, the Blackfeet murderers; and scouts of both tribes haunted every ht pass with provisions and peltries which these rascals could plunder

The trappers circuhtfall and lifting the gaht in the ination of the Indians peopled with terrors enough to frighten the ofcataract at sundohen the thaw of the upper snows ceased, the smothered roar of rivers under ice, the rush of whirlpools through the blackness of so of rocks thron by unknown forces, the shi+vering echo that ” fros filled the Indian with superstitious fears