A few slow careful steps forward, and he stopped again, looked
straight into my eyes, then beyond me towards the lake, all the while
sniffing. I was still only part of the shore. Yet he was so near that
I caught the gleam of his eyes, and saw the nostrils swell and the
muzzle twitch nervously.
Another step or two, and he planted his fore feet firmly. The long
hairs began to rise along his spine, and under his wrinkled chops was
a flash of white teeth. Still he had no suspicion of the motionless
object there in the grass. He looked rather out on the lake. Then he
glided into the brush and was lost to sight and hearing.
He was so close that I scarcely dared breathe as I waited, expecting
him to come out farther down the shore. Five minutes passed without
the slightest sound to indicate his whereabouts, though I was
listening intently in the dead hush that was on the lake. All the
while I smelled him strongly. One can smell a bear almost as far as he
can a deer, though the scent does not cling so long to the underbrush.
A bush swayed slightly below where he had disappeared. I was watching
it closely when some sudden warning--I know not what, for I did not
hear but only felt it--made me turn my head quickly. There, not six
feet away, a huge head and shoulders were thrust out of the bushes on
the bank, and a pair of gleaming eyes were peering intently down upon
me in the grass.
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