>>2777234From the Lewis and Clark diaries:
They rode on into a dark fir forest, the little Spanish ponies
sucking at the thin air, and just at dusk as Clark's horse was clambering over a fallen
log a lean blond bear rose up out of the swale on the far side where it had been
feeding and looked down at them with dim pig's eyes.
Clark's horse reared and Clark flattened himself along the horse's shoulder and
drew his pistol. One of the Delawares was next behind him and the horse he rode was
falling back hard and he was trying to turn it, beating it about the head with his balled
fist, and the bear's long muzzle swung toward them in a stunned articulation, amazed
beyond reckoning, some foul gobbet dangling from its jaws and its chops dyed red with
blood. Clark fired. The ball struck the bear in the chest and the bear leaned with a
strange moan and seized the Delaware and lifted him from the horse.
Clark fired again into the thick ruff of fur forward of the bear's shoulder as it turned and the man dangling from the bear's jaws looked down at them cheek and jowl with the brute and
one arm about its neck like some crazed defector in a gesture of defiant camaraderie.
All through the woods a bedlam of shouts and the whack of men beating the screaming
horses into submission. Clark cocked the pistol a third time as the bear swung with
the indian dangling from its mouth like a doll and passed over him in a sea of
honey-colored hair smeared with blood and a reek of carrion and the rooty smell of the
creature itself. The shot rose and rose, a small core of metal scurrying toward the
distant beltways of matter grinding mutely to the west above them all. Several rifleshots
rang out led by Lewis and the beast loped horribly into the forest with his hostage and was lost among the darkening trees.
