The roaring of the flame was like a hurricane.  A huge pine tree came crashing down across the pool; it barely missed the man.  The splash of water quenched the blazes for the most part, but it gave off such a heat that he had to move—­a little nearer to the Bear.  Another fell at an angle, killing a coyote, and crossing the first tree.  They blazed fiercely at their junction, and the Bear edged from it a little nearer the man.  Now they were within touching distance.  His useless gun was lying in shallow water near shore, but the man had his knife ready, ready for self-defense.  It was not needed; the fiery power had proclaimed a peace.  Bobbing up and dodging under, keeping a nose in the air and an eye on his foe, each spent an hour or more.  The red hurricane passed on.  The smoke was bad in the woods, but no longer intolerable, and as the Bear straightened up in the pool to move away into shallower water and off into the woods, the man got a glimpse of red blood streaming from the shaggy back and dyeing the pool.  The blood on the trail had not escaped him.  He knew that this was the Bear of Baxter’s canon, this was the Gringo Bear, but he did not know that this was also his old-time Grizzly Jack.  He scrambled out of the pond, on the other side from that taken by the Grizzly, and, hunter and hunted, they went their diverse ways.

X. THE EDDY

All the west slopes of Tallac were swept by the fire, and Kellyan moved to a new hut on the east side, where still were green patches; so did the grouse and the rabbit and the coyote, and so did Grizzly Jack.  His wound healed quickly, but his memory of the rifle smell continued; it was a dangerous smell, a new and horrible kind of smoke—­one he was destined to know too well; one, indeed, he was soon to meet again.  Jack was wandering down the side of Tallac, following a sweet odor that called up memories of former joys—­the smell of honey, though he did not know it.  A flock of grouse got leisurely out of his way and flew to a low tree, when he caught a whiff of man smell, then heard a crack like that which had stung him in the sheep-corral, and down fell one of the grouse close beside him.  He stepped forward to sniff just as a man also stepped forward from the opposite bushes.  They were within ten feet of each other, and they recognized each other, for the hunter saw that it was a singed Bear with a wounded side, and the Bear smelt the rifle-smoke and the leather clothes.  Quick as a Grizzly—­that is, quicker than a flash—­the Bear reared.  The man sprang backward, tripped and fell, and the Grizzly was upon him.  Face to earth the hunter lay like dead, but, ere he struck, Jack caught a scent that made him pause.  He smelt his victim, and the smell was the rolling back of curtains or the conjuring up of a past.  The days in the hunter’s shanty were forgotten, but the feelings of those days were ready to take command at the bidding of the nose.  His nose drank deep of a draft that quelled all rage.  The Grizzly’s humor changed.  He turned and left the hunter quite unharmed.