ursicide

— Bruin having perpetrated a charge worthy of Waterloo, is toddling off as fast as a rather extensive morning’s repast will allow him. / Having made sure of whatever remains of the wreck of eatables and drinkables by consuming them on the spot, a proceeding that in a great measure restores my philosophical equilibrium, I again sally forth bent upon ursicide. / I am not going to be knocked over a second time in so unceremonious a manner, so I pick my way through the underwood of the forest, as cautiously and stealthily as possible, almost on my hands and knees, my gun on full cock, and ready for another charge as soon as the enemy chooses.

— I made for the barns to catch Bruin napping or lolling in the old hay. I entertain a vendetta toward the ursine family. I had a duello, pistol against claw, with one of them in the mountains of Oregon, and have nothing to show to point the moral and adorn the tale. My antagonist of that hand-to-hand fight received two shots, and then dodged into cover and was lost in the twilight. Soon or late in my life, I hoped that I should avenge this evasion. Ripogenus would, perhaps, give what the Nachchese Pass had taken away. / Vain hope! I was not to be an ursicide. I begin to fear that I shall slay no other than my proper personal bearishness. I did my duty for another result at Ripogenus. I bolted audaciously into every barn. I made excursions into the woods around. I found the mark of the beast, not the beast. He had not long ago decamped, and was now, perhaps, sucking the meditative paw hard-by in an arbor of his bear-garden.