Oowikapun | Page 6

he had responded to Memotas's entreaties and become a Christian, but the heart is hard and blinded as well as deceitful, and the devil is cunning. So long, sad years passed by ere Oowikapun, after trying, as we shall see, other ways to find peace and soul comfort, humbled himself at the cross, and found peace in believing on the Lord Jesus Christ.
Oowikapun returned to his little lodge, rekindled the fire, and tried to enter upon his hunting life where he had left off when wounded by the wolf. He stretched the furs already secured, and then early next morning visited his traps and spent the rest of the day hunting for deer. His success was not very great; the fact is, what he had heard and witnessed during the days of his sojourn in the wigwam of Memotas had given him so much food for thought that he was not concentrating his mind on his work in a manner that would bring success. He would sometimes get into a reverie so absorbing that he would stop in the trail and strive to think over and over again what he had heard about the good book and its teachings. Very suddenly one day was he roused out of one of these reveries. He had gone out to visit some traps which he had set in a place where he had noticed the tracks of wild cats. While going along through a dense forest with his gun strapped on his back he got so lost in thought that his naturally shrewd instincts as a hunter, sharpened by practice, seemed to have deserted him, and he nearly stumbled over a huge, old she bear and a couple of young cubs. With a growl of rage at being thus disturbed the fierce brute rushed at him, and quickly broke up his reverie and brought him back to a sense of present danger. To unstrap his gun in time for its successful use was impossible, but the ever-ready sharp pointed knife was available, and so Oowikapun, accustomed to such battles, although never before taken so unexpectedly, sprang back to the nearest tree, which fortunately for him was close at hand. With a large tree at his back, and a good knife in his hand, an experienced Indian has the advantage on his side and can generally kill his savage antagonist without receiving a wound, but if attacked by a black bear in the open plain, when armed with only a knife, the hunter very rarely kills his enemy without receiving a fearful hug or some dangerous wounds.
One of the first bits of advice which an old, experienced Indian hunter gives to a young hunter, be he white or Indian, who goes out anxious to kill a bear, or who may possibly while hunting for other game be attacked by one, is to get his back up against a tree so large that if the bear is not killed by the bullet of his gun, he may be in the best possible position to fight him with his knife. It will be no child's play, for a wounded, maddened bear is a fierce foe. The black bear's method of trying to kill his human antagonist is quite different from that of the grizzly bear of the Rocky Mountains. The grizzly strikes out with his dreadful claws with such force that he can tear a man to pieces and is able to crush down a horse under his powerful blows, but the black bear tries to get the hunter in his long, strong, armlike fore legs, and then crush him to death. The hug of a bear, as some hunters know to their cost, is a warm, close embrace. Some who, by the quick, skillful use of their knives, or by the prompt arrival of a rescue party, have been rescued from the almost deathly hug, have told me how their ribs have been broken and their breastbones almost crushed in by the terrible embrace. I know of several who have been in such conflict, and although they managed to escape death by driving their knives into some vital spot, yet they had suffered so much from broken ribs and other injuries received, that they were never as strong and vigorous afterward. But with a good tree at his back, his trusty knife in his hand, and his brain cool, the advantage is all on the side of the hunter.
Among the many stories told of such conflicts, there is one by a Canadian Indian which shows that even the women know how to successfully conquer in these encounters. This hunter was out looking for game, and had succeeded in killing a deer, which he left in the woods with his wife, skinning it, while he returned