I could not repress an exclamation of surprise and thrilling excitement, and I uttered it as I raised my rifle. Just the instant I saw his shining fur through the circle of my rear sight he heard me and jumped, and my bullet missed him. Like a black flash he was gone around a corner of gray ledge.
"Well!" I ejaculated, suddenly weak. "After all this long day--to get a chance like that--and miss!"
All that seemed left of that long day was the sunset, out of which I could not be cheated by blunders or bad luck. Westward a glorious golden ball blazed over the rim. Above that shone an intense belt of color--Coleridge's yellow lightning--and it extended to a bank of cloud that seemed transparent purple, and above all this flowed a sea of purest blue sky with fleecy sails of pink and white and rose, exquisitely flecked with gold.
Lost indeed was I to weariness and time until the gorgeous transformation at last ended in dull gray. I walked along the rim, back to where I had tied my horse. He saw me and whinnied before I located the spot. I just about had strength enough left to straddle him. And presently through the twilight shadows I caught a bright glimmer of our camp-fire. Supper was ready; Takahashi grinned his concern away; all the men were waiting for me; and like the Ancient Mariner I told my tale. As I sat to a bountiful repast regaling myself, the talk of my companions seemed absolutely satisfying.
George Haught, on a stand at the apex of the canyon, had heard and seen a big brown bear climbing up through the thicket, and he had overshot and missed. R.C. had espied a big black bear walking a slide some four hundred yards down the canyon slope, and forgetting that he had a heavy close-range shell in his rifle instead of one of high trajectory, he had aimed accordingly, to undershoot half a foot and thus lose his opportunity. Nielsen had been lost most of the day. It seemed everywhere he heard yells and bays down in the canyon, and once he had heard a loud rattling crash of a heavy bear tearing through the thicket. Edd told of the fearful climb he and his father had made, how they had shot at the grizzly a long way off, how funny another bear had rolled around in his bed across the canyon. But the hounds got too tired to hold the trails late in the day. And lastly Edd said: "When you an' Ben were smokin' the grizzly I could hear the bullets hit close above us, an' I was sure scared stiff for fear you'd roll him down on us. But father wasn't scared. He said, 'let the old Jasper roll down! We'll assassinate him!'"