"Bauman,that bear has been walking on two legs."Bauman laughed at this,but his partner insisted that he was right,and upon again examining the tracks with a torch,they certainly did seem to be made by but two paws,or feet.However,it was too dark to make sure.After discussing whether the footprints could possibly be those of a human being,and coming to the conclusion that they could not be,the two men rolled up in their blankets,and went to sleep under the lean-to.
At midnight Bauman was awakened by some noise,and sat up in his blankets.As he did so his nostrils were struck by a strong,wild-beast odor,and he caught the loom of a great body in the darkness at the mouth of the lean-to.Grasping his rifle,he fired at the vague,threatening shadow,but must have missed,for immediately afterwards he heard the smashing of the underwood as the thing,whatever it was,rushed off into the impenetrable blackness of the forest and the night.
After this the two men slept but little,sitting up by the rekindled fire,but they heard nothing more.In the morning they started out to look at the few traps they had set the previous evening and to put out new ones.By an unspoken agreement they kept together all day,and returned to camp towards evening.
On nearing it they saw,hardly to their astonishment,that the lean-to had been again torn down.The visitor of the preceding day had returned,and in wanton malice had tossed about their camp kit and bedding,and destroyed the shanty.The ground was marked up by its tracks,and on leaving the camp it had gone along the soft earth by the brook,where the footprints were as plain as if on snow,and,after a careful scrutiny of the trail,it certainly did seem as if,whatever the thing was,it had walked off on but two legs.
The men,thoroughly uneasy,gathered a great heap of dead logs,and kept up a roaring fire throughout the night,one or the other sitting on guard most of the time.About midnight the thing came down through the forest opposite,across the brook,and stayed there on the hill-side for nearly an hour.They could hear the branches crackle as it moved about,and several times it uttered a harsh,grating,long-drawn moan,a peculiarly sinister sound.Yet it did not venture near the fire.