Other places proving barren, we finally brought up at Wesnoi Leide, half an hour’s row from Ozinka, and found the dog fish just beginning to run up stream, at the head of the bay.  Better still, there were fresh bear tracks.

The wind was favorable, and we stationed ourselves the first evening on a bluff overlooking a long meadow, on the lower part of the stream.  Hardly had we sat down, when Vacille said:  “If that brown spot on the hillside were not so large, I would take it for a bear.”  The brown spot promptly walked into the woods, half a mile away.  We were keen enough again, but our watching proved fruitless, as nothing came down on the meadow, showing that there was good fishing well up the stream.

We rowed back to Ozinka, and left the country undisturbed, determined to get well into the woods the following night, before the bear came down to feed.

The next evening we made an early start, and walking up the stream into the woods found plenty of fresh tracks, and finally halted by some big trees.  The men placed themselves on some high limbs, where they could watch, and I stood in deep grass, some six or eight feet from a well-traveled path used by the bear in fishing the stream.  The magpies were calling all about, and seemed to be saying, Midwit, midwit, Aleut for bear.  The air was dead calm.  Hardly were the men on their perches, before they saw a bear walk into the brush on one side of the valley.  We waited quietly, in the midst of mosquitoes, but nothing came in sight.  It was already after 10 o’clock, and so dark that the men gave up their watch, and came down to join me.  Suddenly we heard a sharp screech up the stream, and when it was repeated, Vacille said it must be a young bear crying because its mother would not feed it fast enough.  Here Vacille did some good work.

We walked rapidly up stream, through the thick brush, and before we had gone 100 yards heard a large animal, just ahead, moving about in the brush, and making a good deal of noise.  I started ahead to get a view, thinking we had disturbed the bear, but Vacille held me back.  We walked on noiselessly to a little bare point in the stream, and just then the bear appeared, bent on fishing, thirty feet away.  She lumbered down into the stream, and when I fired fell into the water, the ball just missing her shoulder.  She was up again, and this time I shot hurriedly, and a little behind the ribs.  She ran, crossing up about forty feet away, and a trial with the .30-40 scored, but made no impression.

Tchort caught up with her just as she fell, after running a hundred feet or more, and gave us to understand that he was the responsible party.  We tried immediately to capture the cub, which would have been a rare prize, but had no success at all in the thicket.  The old one, though of considerable age, was not a large specimen, and, with the exception of the head, the hair was in bad condition.  Length about 6 feet 4 inches; height at shoulder 44 inches; weight 500 pounds.  The stomach was full of salmon, gleaned from the fishing beds made all along the stream.  The Ozinka people did not enjoy my killing a bear just outside the village.