McKiernan did not lose consciousness, but he was unable to move.  He knew his left eye was gone, and he feared that he was bleeding to death.  He heard the bear rolling down the slope, heard the crash of bushes as he struck the bottom, and knew because of his bawling that the Grizzly was mortally hurt.  Then he wondered why his partner did not come to him, and sense of pain and fear of death were submerged under a wave of indignation at the man’s cowardice and flight.  Presently he heard faintly a voice calling him across the canyon, but could not distinguish the words, and after a time he realized that his partner had fled back to the cabin, and was shouting to him.  He could not answer, nor could he raise his head, but he managed to free one arm and wave it feebly.  The partner finally saw the movement and plucked up enough courage to come back, and with his help McKiernan somehow got to the cabin.

A young doctor from San Jose attempted to patch up the broken skull after removing a large piece and leaving the envelope of the brain exposed.  He had read something about trephining and inserting silver plates, and he hammered out a silver dollar and set it like a piece of mosaic into McKiernan’s forehead, where it resisted the efforts of nature to repair damages and caused McKiernan a thousand times more agony than he had suffered from the Grizzly’s tusks.  Only the marvelous vitality of the man saved him from the consequences of such surgery.  For days and weeks he sat in his cabin dripping his life away out of a wound that closed, swelled with fierce pain and broke out afresh, and the drain upon his system gave him an incredible appetite for meat, which he devoured in Gargantuan quantities.

Then old Doctor Spencer went up to “Mountain Charlie’s” cabin, took out the silver dollar, removed a wad of eyebrow that had been pushed into the hole made by the bear’s lower tooth in the eye socket, and McKiernan recovered.

And the first thing he did when he was able to travel was to load up a shotgun and hunt San Jose from one end to the other for the man who had set a silver dollar in his skull.

CHAPTER V.

In the valley of the shadow.

Over-confidence and some contempt for bears, born of easy victories cheaply won, led one noted Californian hunter into The Valley of the Shadow, from which he emerged content to let his fame rest wholly upon his past record and without ardor for further distinction as a slayer of Grizzlies.  As mementoes of a fight that has become a classic in the ursine annals of California, John W. Searles, the borax miner of San Bernardino, kept for many years in his office a two-ounce bottle filled with bits of bone and teeth from his own jaw, and a Spencer rifle dented in stock and barrel by the teeth of a Grizzly.