The newcomers, disposing themselves comfortably upon various sacked commodities, proceeded to smoke and casually inspect the voluble stranger. He was a tallish, well-built man nearing middle-age, with a gray moustache, a thin beak of a nose, and a bleached-blue eyes. He was dressed in an old tweed suit, obviously of English cut, a pair of high-heeled, spurred riding-boots and a cowboy hat. Vouchsafing a brief nod to the visitors he continued his conversation with MacDavid.
"Ya-as," he was drawling, "one of the most extraordinary shots you ever heard of, Morley! I was between the devil and the deep sea--properly. There was the bear--rushing me at the double and there was the cougar perched growling up on the rock behind me. I made one jump sideways and let the bear have it--slap through the brain, and . . . that same shot, sir, ricocheted up the face of the rock and killed the cougar--just as he was in the act of springing! By George, y'know, it was one of the swiftest things that ever happened!"
A tense silence succeeded the conclusion of this thrilling narrative.
MacDavid re-lit his pipe and puffed thoughtfully awhile. "Eyah," he remarked reminiscently, "feller does run up against some swift propositions now an' again. I mind one time I was headin' home from Kananaskis, an' a bear jumped me from behind a fallen log. The lever of me rifle jammed so, all I could do was to beat it--in a hurry--an' I sure did hit th' high spots, you bet! It was in th' early spring an' th' snow still lay pretty deep, but--I'd got a twenty yards start of that bear, an' I finally beat him to it an' made my get-away."
The stranger whistled incredulously. "Wha-a-tt!" he almost shouted, "D'ye mean to tell me that bear got within twenty yards of you and couldn't catch you? Why, man! It's incredible!"
"Fact," replied MacDavid calmly, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, "It was this way: It was near th' edge of th' bush where th' bear first jumped me, an'--just as we hit th' open ground--one o' them warm Chinook winds sprung up behind us, travellin' east. . . .
"Man!" He paused impressively. "The way that wind started in to melt th' snow was a corker--just like lard in a fryin'-pan. But--I just managed to keep ahead of it an' while I had a good, hard surface of snow to run on, the bear--why he was sloppin around in th' slush in my wake--couldn't get a firm foothold, I guess. . . ."