"It must be a bear," said he; "come, now, we shall all have some
sport. Better fun to fight him than to fight an old buffalo bull;
grizzly bear so strong and smart."
So we all galloped forward together, prepared for a hard fight; for
these bears, though clumsy in appearance and extremely large, are
incredibly fierce and active. The swell of the prairie concealed the
black object from our view. Immediately after it appeared again.
But now it seemed quite near to us; and as we looked at it in
astonishment, it suddenly separated into two parts, each of which
took wing and flew away. We stopped our horses and looked round at
Henry, whose face exhibited a curious mixture of mirth and
mortification. His hawk's eye had been so completely deceived by the
peculiar atmosphere that he had mistaken two large crows at the
distance of fifty rods for a grizzly bear a mile off. To the
journey's end Henry never heard the last of the grizzly bear with
wings.
In the afternoon we came to the foot of a considerable hill. As we
ascended it Rouville began to ask questions concerning our conditions
and prospects at home, and Shaw was edifying him with a minute
account of an imaginary wife and child, to which he listened with
implicit faith. Reaching the top of the hill we saw the windings of
Horse Creek on the plains below us, and a little on the left we could
distinguish the camp of Bisonette among the trees and copses along
the course of the stream.
