Few wilderness adventures offer a more stern test to human nerves than the frightful rush of a maddened grizzly. It typifies all that is primal and savage in the wild: the insane rage that can find relief only in the cruel rending of flesh; the thundering power that no mere mortal strength can withstand. But Ben was a woodsman. He had been tried in the fire. He knew that not only his life, but that of the girl in the cavern depended upon this one shot; and it was wholly characteristic of Wolf Darby that his eye held true and his arm was steady as a vice of iron.

He was aware that he must wait until the bear was almost upon him, in order to be sure to send the bullet home to a vital place. This alone was a test requiring no small measure of self-control. The instinct was to fire at once. In the moonlight it was difficult to see his sights: his only chance was to enlarge his target to the last, outer limit of safety. He aimed for the great throat, below the slavering jaw.

His finger pressed back steadily against the trigger. The slightest flinching, the smallest motion might yet throw off his aim. The rifle spoke with a roar.

But this wilderness battle was not yet done. The ball went straight home, down through the throat, mushrooming and plowing on into the neck, inflicting a wound that was bound to be mortal within a few seconds. The bear recoiled; but the mighty engine of its life was not yet destroyed. Its incalculable fonts of vitality had not yet run down.

The grizzly bounded forward again. The ball had evidently missed the vertebrae and spinal column. His crashing, thunderous roar of pain smothered instantly the reechoing report of the rifle and stifled the instinctive cry that had come to Ben's lips. He was a forester; and he had known of old what havoc a mortally wounded bear can wreak in a few seconds of life. In that strange, vivid instant Ben knew that his own and the girl's life still hung in the balance, with the beam inclining toward death.

The grizzly was in his death-agony, nothing more; yet in that final convulsion he could rip into shreds the powerful form that opposed him. Ben knew, with a cold, sure knowledge, that if he failed to slay the beast, it would naturally crawl into its lair for its last breath. As this dreadful thought flashed home he dropped the empty rifle and seized the axe that leaned against a log of spruce beside the fire.

There was no time at all to search out another shell and load his rifle. If the shock of the heavy bullet had not slackened the bear's pace he would not even have had time to seize the axe. Finally, if the bear had not been all but dead, in his last, threshing agony, Ben's mortal strength could not have sent home one blow. As it was they found themselves facing each other over the embers of the fire, well-matched contestants whose stake was life and whose penalty was death. The grizzly turned his head, caught sight of Ben, identified him as the agent of his agony, and lurched forward.

Just in time Ben sprang aside, out of the reach of those terrible forearms; and his axe swung mightly in the air. Its blade gleamed and descended—a blow that might have easily broken the bear's back if it had gone true but which now seemed only to infuriate him the more. The bear reared up, reeled, and lashed down; and dying though he was, he struck with incredible power. One slashing stroke of that vast forepaw, one slow closing of those cruel fangs upon skull or breast, and life would have gone out like a light. But Ben leaped aside again, and again swung down his axe.

These were but the first blows of a terrific battle that carried like a storm through the still reaches of the forest. Far in the distant tree aisles the woods people paused in their night's occupation to listen, stirred and terrified by the throb and thrill in the air; the grazing caribou lifted his growing horns and snorted in terror; the beasts of prey paused in the chase, growling uneasily, gazing with fierce, luminous eyes in the direction of the battle.

It is beyond the ken of man whether or not, in their wild hearts, these forest folk sensed what was taking place,—that their gray monarch, the sovereign grizzly, was at the death-fight with some dreadful invader from the South. They heard the bear's fierce bawls, unimitatable by any other voice as he lashed down blow after blow; and they heard the thud and crunch of the axe against his body. Had this monarch of the trails found his master at last?

Gazing out through the aperture of the cave Beatrice beheld the whole picture: the ring of spruce trees, the glade so strange and ensilvered in the moonlight, and these two fighting beasts, magnificent in fury over the embers of the dying fire. And Ben's powers increased, rather than lessened. Ever he swung his terrible axe with greater power.

He fought like the wolf that was his blood brother,—lunging, striking down, recoiling out of harm's way, and springing forward to strike again. This man was Wolf Darby, a forester known in many provinces for his woods prowess, but even those who had seen his most spectacular feats, in past days, had not appreciated the real extent of his powers. There was a fury and a might in his blows that was hard to associate with the world of human beings,—such ferociousness and wolf-like savagery, welling strength and prowess of battle that mostly men have forgotten in their centuries of civilization, but which still mark the death-fight between beasts.

Ben had always recalled the earlier types of man—his great-thewed ancestors, wild hunters in the forests of ancient Germany—but never so much as to-night. He was in his natural surroundings—at the mouth of his cave in which the Woman watched and exulted in his blows, enclosed by the primeval forest and beside the ashes of his fire. There could be nothing strange or unreal about this scene to Beatrice. It was more true than any soft vista of a far-away city could possibly be. It was life itself,—man battling for his home and his woman against the raw forces of the wild.

All superficialities and superfluities were gone, and only the basic stuff of life remained,—the cave, the fire, the man who fought the beast in the light of the ancient moon. At that moment Ben was no more of the twentieth century than he was of the first, or of the first more than of some dark, unnumbered century of the world's young days. He was simply the male of his species, the man-child of all time, forgetting for the moment all the little lessons civilization had taught, and fighting his fight in the basic way for the basic things.

This was no new war which Ben and the grizzly fought in the pale light of the moon. It had begun when the race began, and it would continue, in varied fields, until men perished from the earth. Ben fought for life—not only his own but the girl's—that old, beloved privilege to breathe the air and see and know and be. He represented, by a strange symbolism, the whole race that has always fought in merciless and never-ending battle with the cruel and oppressive powers of nature. In the grizzly were typified all those ancient enemies that have always opposed, with claw and fang, this stalwart, self-knowing breed that has risen among the primates: he symbolized not only the Beast of the forest, but the merciless elements, storm and flood and cold and all the legions of death. And had they but known their ultimate fate if this intruder survived the battle and brought his fellows into this, their last stronghold, the watching forest creatures would have prayed to see the grizzly strike him to the earth.

Ben knew, too, that he was fighting for his home; and this also lent him strength. Home! His shelter from the storm and the cold, the thing that marked him a man instead of a beast. The grizzly had come to drive him forth; and they had met beside the ashes of his fire.

The old exhilaration and rapture of battle flashed through him as he swung his axe, sending home blow after blow. Sometimes he cried out, involuntarily, in his fury and hatred; and as the bear weakened he waged the fight at closer quarters. His muscles made marvelous response, flinging him out of danger in the instant of necessity and giving terrific power to his blows.

He danced about the shaggy, bleeding form of the bear, swinging his axe, howling in his rage, and escaping the smashing blows of the bear with miraculous agility,—a weird and savage picture in the moonlight. But at last the grizzly lunged too far. Ben sprang aside, just in time, and he saw his chance as the great, reeling form sprawled past. He aimed a terrific blow just at the base of the skull.

The silence descended quickly thereafter. The blow had gone straight home, and the last flicker of waning life fled from the titanic form. He went down sprawling; Ben stood waiting to see if another blow was needed. Then the axe fell from his hands.

For a moment he stood as if dazed. It was hard to remember all that occurred in the countless life times he had lived since the grizzly had stolen out of the spruce forest. But soon he remembered Fenris and walked unsteadily to his side.

The wolf, however, was already recovering from the blow. He had been merely stunned; seemingly no bones were broken. Once more Ben turned to the mouth of the cavern.

Sobbing and white as the moonlight itself Beatrice met him in the doorway. She too had been uninjured; his arm had saved her from the rending fangs. She was closer to him now, filling a bigger part of his life. He didn't know just why. He had fought for her; and some way—they were more to each other.

And this was his cavern,—his stronghold of rock where he might lay his head, his haven and his hearth, and the symbol of his dominance over the beasts of the field. He had fought for this, too. And he suddenly knew a great and inner peace and a love for the sheltering walls that would dwell forever in the warp and woof of his being.