Some hours later he was awakened by “a kind of a bull beller,” as he described it.  The dog ran barking across the river.  Samson seized the gun and followed him.  The first dim light of the morning showed through the tree-tops.  Some big animal was growling and roaring and rolling over and over in a clump of bushes near the meat rack.  In half a moment it rolled out upon the open ground near Samson.  The latter could now see that it was a large black bear engaged in a desperate struggle with the pack basket.  The bear had forced his great head into the top of it and its hoop had got a firm hold on his neck.  He was sniffing and growling and shaking his head and striking with both fore paws to free himself.  Sambo had laid hold of his stub tail and the bear was trying in vain to reach him, with the dog dodging as he held on.  The movements of both were so lively that Samson had to step like a dancer to keep clear of them.  The bear, in sore trouble, leaped toward him and the swaying basket touched the side of the man.  Back into the bushes and out again they struggled, Sambo keeping his hold.  A more curious and ludicrous sight never gladdened the eye of a hunter.  Samson had found it hard to get a chance to shoot at the noisy, swift torrent of fur.  Suddenly the bear rose on his hind legs and let out an angry woof and gave the basket a terrific shaking.  In this brief pause a ball from the rifle went to his heart and he fell.  Samson jumped forward, seized the dog’s collar and pulled him away while the bear struggled in his death throes.  Then the man started for camp, while his great laugh woke distant echoes in the forest.

“Bear steak for dinner!” he shouted to Sarah and the children, who stood shivering with fright on the bridge.

Again his laughter filled the woods with sound.

“Gracious Peter!  What in the world was it?” Sarah asked.

“Well, ye see, ol’ Uncle Bear came to steal our bacon an’ the bacon kind o’ stole him,” said Samson, between peals of laughter, the infection of which went to the heart and lips of every member of the family.  “Shoved his head into the pack basket and the pack basket wouldn’t let go.  It said:  ‘This is the first time I ever swallered a bear, an’ if you don’t mind I’ll stay on the outside.  I kind o’ like you.’  But the bear did mind.  He didn’t want to be et up by a basket.  He’d always done the swallerin’ himself an’ he hollered an’ swore at the basket an’ tried to scare it off.  Oh, I tell ye he was awful sassy and impudent to that old thing, but it hung on and the way he flounced around, with Sambo clingin’ to his tail, and the bear thinkin’ that he was bein’ swallered at both ends, was awful.  Come an’ see him.”

They went to the bear, now dead.  Sambo ran ahead of them and laid hold of the bear’s stump of a tail and shook it savagely, as if inclined to take too much credit upon himself.  The hoop of the pack basket had so tight a hold upon the bear’s neck that it took a strong pull to get it back over his head.  One side of the basket had been protected from the bear’s claws by a pad of sole leather—­the side which, when the basket was in use, rested on the back of its carrier.  His claws had cut nearly through it and torn a carrying strap into shreds.