Free Bendigo Shafter (1979) by Louis L'amour

and try to find something to eat, then they'll go back and hole up again.
    We found where he'd dug into the snow after roots and such. Given a chance bears will stick to a diet of bugs, grass, roots, and berries. They kill small animals occasionally, but with the exception of the grizzly they rarely kill for meat, even more rarely will they bother a man. This one was a grizzly. We knew that from the extra long claws on the forefeet.
    We followed him up Twin Creek until he turned up a canyon along Deep Creek. Let's look for something else, Ethan suggested, this one's poorly. If he was fat he wouldn't be out. And then he added, I never much liked to killl bears, anyhow.
    Our way led along an easy slope into some trees beyond, then into a valley where there was a frozen marsh with trees trailing down to its edge. And there were four elk.
    How far do you make it? I asked.
    Two hundred yards ... maybe more. Over white snow, distance can be a tricky thing.
    Do we chance it?
    We were in the open. At any moment they might see us. The wind was blowing across, and their heads were down, scratching at something at the edge of the marsh.
    So we walked toward them. Five yards ... ten. We had our rifles poised for a quick shot if their heads came up. We advanced another ten yards before the big bull brought his head up with a jerk, looking at us.
    With the first stirring of muscle we had frozen in place, and now we held perfectly still. The others looked up, and one skittish youngster walked off a few feet. That seemed to start them. If they began to walk, they would soon be running.
    My shot was high. The bull dropped in his tracks, but I knew my shot was too high. Ethan fired and the second elk jumped, bounded three times then fell all of a piece. We went in fast and were within twenty yards when my bull came off the ground with a lunge, one antler hanging.
    He came up running and I fired my rifle like a pistol from one hand. The bullet hit him behind the left shoulder and he ran on for thirty yards before he dropped. I levered a fresh cartridge into the chamber and went on to where he lay.
    My first bullet had hit the base of the antler, stunning the bull. My second was a heart shot and pure luck. I'd tried for the heart, of course, but with him running like that it was a chancy thing.
    Cold as it was, we couldn't waste time but took our skinning knives and went to work. From time to time I looked over to where Ethan was skinning out his elk. We'd been uncommonly lucky and should be back to town by nightfall with fresh meat.
    We were just finishing skinning when I happened to look up, and out of the corner of my eye I caught a flicker of movement to the canyon beyond where Ethan was working.
    My meat was skinned out, and I'd been sacking it up in the fresh hide when I caught that move. My rifle was at hand, and I wiped my hands clean in the snow, watching that spot without looking directly at it. Of a sudden, a bird flew up.
    My hand dropped to my rifle, and as I turned I saw a man rise up with a rifle aimed right at Ethan. I was down on one knee and there was no time for aiming. I fired from where my rifle was, the stock under my arm.
    Tlie man with the rifle reared up on his toes and fell full length from the brush.
    Ethan looked up at the shot and looked right toward me, and in a flash I knew that somebody was probably sneaking up on me, too. So as I spun around, I fired.
    I was fifty feet higher than Ethan, a good hundred yards from him, and an easy two hundred yards from the man who had appeared behind me. My bullet hit the dirt about six feet short of him, but he ducked back out of sight.
    The sound of the shots faded, and all was still. Ethan had disappeared. Suddenly there was another shot and my bundle of meat jerked. Evidently somebody had mistaken the meat for me. Lying still, my eyes searched for a target, but I could see nothing. Their attempt at surprise having failed, they had to make another try at it, but we were in a