Instinctively I cocked and leveled the rifle, and though I could not clearly see the red animal bearing down the slope, such was my state that I fired.  Then followed a roaring crash—­a terrible breaking onslaught upon the brush—­and the huge red mass seemed to flash down toward me.  I worked the lever of the rifle.  But I had forgotten Haught’s caution.  I did not work the lever far enough down, so that the next cartridge jammed in the receiver.  With a second shock, different this time, I tried again.  In vain!  The terrible crashing of brush appeared right upon me.  For an instant that seemed an age I stood riveted to the spot, my blood congealing, my heart choking me, my tongue pasted to the roof of my mouth.  Then I dropped the rifle and whirled to plunge away.  Like a deer I bounded.  I took prodigious bounds.  To escape—­to find a tree to leap into—­that was my only thought.  A few rods down the slope—­it seemed a mile—­I reached a pine with low branches.  Like a squirrel I ran up this—­straddled a limb high up—­and gazed back.

My sensations then were dominated by the relief of salvation.  I became conscious of them.  Racing blood, bursting heart, labored pang of chest, prickling, burning skin, a queer involuntary flutter of muscles, like a palsy—­these attested to the instinctive primitive nature of my state.  I heard the crashing of brush, the pound of soft jumps over to my left.  With eyes that seemed magnifying I gazed to see a big red woolly steer plunge wildly down the slope and disappear.  A third shock possessed me—­amaze.  I had mistaken a wild, frightened steer for a red cinnamon bear!

I sat there some moments straddling that branch.  Then I descended, and went back to the place I had dropped my rifle, and securing that I stood a moment listening.  The hounds had taken the chase around below me into the gorge and were drawing away.  It was useless to try to follow them.  I sat down again and gave myself up to meditation.

I tried to treat the situation as a huge joke, but that would not go.  No joke indeed!  My horse had made me risk too much, my excitement had been too intense, my fright had been too terrible.  Reality for me could not have been any more grave.  I had risked my neck on a stubborn coward of a horse, I had mistaken a steer for a bear, I had forgotten how to manipulate the borrowed rifle.  These were the careless elements of tragedy.  The thought sobered me.  I took the lesson to heart.  And I reflected on the possible point of view of the bear.  He had probably gone to sleep on a full stomach of juniper berries and a big drink of spring water.  Rudely he had been routed out by a pack of yelping, fiendish hounds.  He had to run for his life.  What had he done to deserve such treatment?  Possibly he might have killed some of Haught’s pigs, but most assuredly he had never harmed me.  In my sober frame of mind then I rather disapproved of my wholly unjustifiable murderous intent.  I would