A feeling of annoyance swept upon him, and picking up his rifle, he hurled it among the trees.

“Lie there,” he ordered.  “You are of no use to me now, and I have no strength to tote you along.”

Then he laughed, and the hollow sound of his voice startled him.  He sprang to his feet and looked around.  Why had he laughed? he asked himself.  Was he going out of his mind?  He glanced at his hands and shuddered, so bruised and bleeding were they.  His clothes, too, were in tatters, while his boots were so worn that portions of his feet were visible.

For a few minutes he stood rigidly still, as if in a dream.  The intense loneliness of the place was appalling.  It was unnerving him, and he was losing control of himself.  Suddenly he started and ran as if for life, back over the track he had recently traversed.  He was no longer the Tom Reynolds who had started forth from Big Draw, but a denizen of the wilds.  The desire for food possessed him.  It made him mad, a demon, ready to fall upon any creature that crossed his path.  He was crafty as well, and reaching the shelter of the forest, he glided cautiously along the edge of the meadow, up toward the little brook where he had slept the night before.  No tiger creeping through the jungle moved more stealthily than did he.  Nothing escaped his notice, and he eagerly watched for rabbit or squirrel that he might pounce upon it.

For some time he thus advanced, but nothing could he see.  At length he came to an opening in the trees, which exposed the brook plainly to view.  His eyes swept the stream, and as they did so they presently rested upon a black object crouched upon a fallen tree projecting out over the brook.  He recognized it at once as a black bear, watching for fish.  It was lying flat on the log, with one big paw close to the water waiting for its breakfast.

Reynolds’ first impulse was to rush forward and engage the brute in a deadly conflict.  But a natural caution restrained him, and he accordingly waited to see what would happen.  Neither did he have to wait long, for in a twinkling the big paw struck, the water splashed, and a shiny form hurtled through the air, and fell several yards away.  And after it sprang the bear, but his body had scarcely left the log ere Reynolds was bounding toward him with such yells and whoops that the forest resounded on all sides.  Startled and surprised beyond measure, the bear paused and looked back.  Seeing, but not understanding the strange creature rushing toward him with wildly waving arms, and emitting such blood-curdling yells, it uttered a hoarse growl of fear and rage and lumbered off for the shelter of the forest as fast as its legs would carry it.