Again he reared.  This time he appeared to locate our direction.  Above the bedlam of yells and bays and yelps and echoes I imagined I heard the grizzly roar.  He was now getting farther along the base of the bluff, and I saw that he would escape us.  My rifle barrel was hot as fire.  My fingers were all thumbs.  I jammed a shell into the receiver.  My last chance had fled!  But Copple’s big, brown, swift hands fed shells to his magazine as ears of corn go to a grinder.  He had a way of poking the base of a shell straight down into the receiver and making it snap forward and down.  Then he fired five more shots as swiftly as he had reloaded.  Some of these hit close to our quarry.  The old grizzly slowed up, and looked across, and wagged his huge head.

“My gun’s on fire all right,” said Copple, grimly, as he loaded still more rapidly.  Carefully he aimed and pulled trigger.  The grizzly gave a spasmodic jerk as if stung and suddenly he made a prodigious leap off a ledge, down into a patch of brush, where he threshed like a lassoed elephant.

“Ben, you hit him!” I yelled, excitedly.

“Only made him mad.  He’s not hurt....  See, he’s up again....  Will you look at that!”

The grizzly appeared to roll out of the brush, and like a huge furry ball of brown, he bounced down the thicketed slope to an open slide where he unrolled, and stretched into a run.  Copple got two more shots before he was out of sight.

“Gone!” ejaculated Copple.  “An’ we never fetched him!...  He ain’t hurt.  Did you see him pile down an’ roll off that slope?...  Let’s see.  I got twenty-three shots at him.  How many had you?”

“I had fifteen.”

“Say, it was some fun, wasn’t it—­smokin’ him along there?  But we ought to have fetched the old sheep-killer....  Wonder what’s happened to the other fellows.”

We looked about us.  Not improbably the exciting moments had been few in number, yet they seemed long indeed.  The Haughts had gotten to the top of the bluff, and were tearing through the brush toward the point Copple had designated.  They reached it too late.

“Where is he?” yelled Edd.

“Gone!” boomed Copple.  “Runnin’ down the canyon.  Call the dogs an’ go down after him.”

When the Haughts came out into the open upon that bench one of the pups and the spotted hound, Rock, were with them.  Old Dan and old Tom were baying up at the head of the canyon, and Sue could be heard yelping somewhere else.  Bear trails seemingly were abundant near our whereabouts.  Presently the Haughts disappeared at the back of the bench where the old grizzly had gone down, and evidently they put the two hounds on his trail.

“That grizzly will climb over round the lower end of this ridge,” declared Copple.  “We want to be there.”

So we hurriedly left our stand, and taking to the South side of the ridge, we ran and walked and climbed and plunged down along the slope.  Keeping up with Copple on foot was harder than riding after Edd and George.  When soon we reached a manzanita thicket I could no longer keep Copple in sight.  He was so powerful that he just crashed through, but I had to worm my way, and walk over the tops of the bushes, like a tight-rope performer.  Of all strong, thick, spiky brush manzanita was the worst.