第25章

Our man had shot him through the centre of the lungs; yet he had pursued him furiously for half a mile, then returned more than twice that distance, and with his talons prepared himself a bed in the earth two feet deep and five feet long; he was perfectly alive when they found him, which was at least two hours after he had received the wound.

The wonderful power of life which these animals possess renders them dreadful; their very track in the mud or sand, which we have sometimes found eleven inches long and seven and one-fourth wide, exclusive of the talons, is alarming; and we had rather encounter two Indians than meet a single brown bear. There is no chance of killing them by a single shot unless the ball goes through the brain, and this is very difficult on account of two large muscles which cover the side of the forehead and the sharp projection of the centre of the frontal bone, which is also thick.

"Our camp was on the south, at the distance of sixteen miles from that of last night. The fleece and skin of the bear were a heavy burden for two men, and the oil amounted to eight gallons."

The name of the badly-scared Bratton was bestowed upon a creek which discharges into the Missouri near the scene of this encounter.

Game continued to be very abundant. On the fourteenth, according to the journal, the hunters were hunted, to their great discomfiture.

The account says:--"Toward evening the men in the hindmost canoes discovered a large brown [grizzly] bear lying in the open grounds, about three hundred paces from the river. Six of them, all good hunters, immediately went to attack him, and concealing themselves by a small eminence came unperceived within forty paces of him.

Four of the hunters now fired, and each lodged a ball in his body, two of them directly through the lungs.

The furious animal sprang up and ran open-mouthed upon them.

"As he came near, the two hunters who had reserved their fire gave him two wounds, one of which, breaking his shoulder, retarded his motion for a moment; but before they could reload he was so near that they were obliged to run to the river, and before they had reached it he had almost overtaken them.

Two jumped into the canoe; the other four separated, and, concealing themselves in the willows, fired as fast as they could reload.

They struck him several times, but, instead of weakening the monster, each shot seemed only to direct him towards the hunters, till at last he pursued two of them so closely that they threw aside their guns and pouches, and jumped down a perpendicular bank of twenty feet into the river: the bear sprang after them, and was within a few feet of the hindmost, when one of the hunters on shore shot him in the head, and finally killed him.

They dragged him to the shore, and found that eight balls had passed through him in different directions. The bear was old, and the meat tough, so that they took the skin only, and rejoined us at camp, where we had been as much terrified by an accident of a different kind.

"This was the narrow escape of one of our canoes, containing all our papers, instruments, medicine, and almost every article indispensable for the success of our enterprise. The canoe being under sail, a sudden squall of wind struck her obliquely and turned her considerably.

The man at the helm, who was unluckily the worst steersman of the party, became alarmed, and, instead of putting her before the wind, luffed her up into it. The wind was so high that it forced the brace of the square-sail out of the hand of the man who was attending it, and instantly upset the canoe, which would have been turned bottom upward but for the resistance made by the awning. Such was the confusion on board, and the waves ran so high, that it was half a minute before she righted, and then nearly full of water, but by bailing her out she was kept from sinking until they rowed ashore.

Besides the loss of the lives of three men, who, not being able to swim, would probably have perished, we should have been deprived of nearly everything necessary for our purposes, at a distance of between two and three thousand miles from any place where we could supply the deficiency."

Fortunately, there was no great loss from this accident, which was caused by the clumsiness and timidity of the steersman, Chaboneau. Captain Lewis's account of the incident records that the conduct of Chaboneau's wife, Sacajawea, was better than that of her cowardly husband. He says:--"The Indian woman, to whom I ascribe equal fortitude and resolution with any person on board at the time of the accident, caught and preserved most of the light articles which were washed overboard."