I drove a feathered shaft below her foreleg.
The confusion and bellowing increased, and, as I drew a fourth arrow
from my quiver, I glanced up just in time to see the old female's hair
rise on the back of her neck. She steadied herself in her wild hurtling
and looked directly at us with red glaring eyes. She saw us for the
first time! Instinctively I knew she would charge, and she did.
Quick as thought, she bounded toward us. Two great leaps and she was on
us. A gun went off at my ear. The bear was literally knocked head over
heels, and fell in backward somersaults down the steep snowbank. At
some fifty yards she checked her course, gathered herself, and
attempted to charge again, but her right foreleg failed her. She rose
on her haunches in an effort to advance, when, like a flash, two arrows
flew at her and disappeared through her heaving sides. She faltered,
wilted, and as we drew to shoot again, she sprawled out on the ground,
a convulsed, quivering mass of fur and muscle--she was dead.
The half grown cubs had disappeared at the boom of the gun. We saw one
making off at a gallop, three hundred yards away.
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