Valdez Daily Prospector

Members of the crew laying steel on the main line of the government railroad near Mile 195 were terror-stricken yesterday by the sudden appearance among them of a vicious brown bear and the life of one of their number was saved by only a narrow margin as the result of the quick and accurate aim of a fellow worker. The huge animal was slain just as he was about to pounce on a laborer.

As one of the workmen, a Swede was walking along the track a short distance from the station camp, he was attacked by the bear, which emerged almost beside him from a small clump of trees immediately adjoining the railroad. The man at one leap broke into full speed and ran between the rails toward camp. The bear swung clumsily up a slight grade embankment and on the right-of-way and gave pursuit.

The animal didn't make a noise like a racing machine, but he covered the ties at a deceptively fast pace. The speeding worker, try as he might, could not increase the thirty-foot lead he had at the start. Indeed, with a quick glance toward the rear, as he approached the station camp, he realized his pursuer, gathering momentum at every bound, was rapidly overtaking him.

Steel ended at the camp, and when the fugitive bounced off the ties he had to step high for the unfinished new grade was soft and bumpy. These conditions, so unfavorable to the man seemed made to the bear's order, for on reaching this part of the course, the animal began to fairly annihilate distance.

The racing laborer dashed through camp yelling for help. His fellow workers, filled with fright and consternation, had parted into groups and were standing mute on either side of the grade. They might have deflected the animal from his pursuit by throwing stones at him, but while no doubt they were duly concerned and alarmed at the dangerous plight of their companion, they evidently preferred that he, rather than they, should try to cheat the hungry beast of a human feast.

One of the workers, however, had the presence of mind to hurry to a near-by tent for a rifle. With the loaded weapon, he hastily returned to the right-of-way and leaped to the top of the grade, so, unobstructed by brush and trees he could get a fair shot at the voracious bear.

He realized he needs must have a mighty accurate aim. As his glance quickly traveled along the top of the rifle barrel, he saw perhaps seventy feet in front of him the lumbering but swiftly moving animal, close not more than five feet-to the fleeing laborer.

The finger pressed the trigger. An impulse for an instant had been not to shoot, for missing the bear would make certain the hitting of the man directly in line ahead. Yet not to fire meant in a moment the tragic end of a desperate race that with every step was becoming more hopeless for the human contestant.

At the flash of the report, the marksman dropped to one knee to peer under the smoke for the result of his effort, and twenty pair of anxious eyes from the sides of the right-of-way were trained on the animated target.

The bullet carried home. The bear dropped in his tracks, dead.

The speeding laborer turned his head and realized his delivery. But he continued twenty feet, his fellow workers say, before he could come to a stop, and in putting breaks on himself, they affirm, his soft-soled shoe packs struck sparks off gravel in the loose roadbed.

An examination of the bear disclosed that the bullet had ploughed through the top of his shoulder into his neck. His carcass weighed 800 pounds.-Exchange.