1050 Life-histories of Northern Animals 



and would go back, get it again, and work up nearer, to lose it 

 once more. 



One night a large Silver-tip came to the carcass. The 

 watcher was ten feet up a small cotton-wood. The Bear smelt 

 him and came sniffing up the wind for some time to find him, 

 but each time lost the trace as he got near. Several times this 

 happened. Then, in determination to find his foe, he began to 

 break down the brush around. He would smash down a 

 thicket with great uproar and then remain as still as death to 

 see if the man was flushed; then another, and again a wait. 

 Sometimes he would wait for 3 or 4 minutes without a move. 

 In this way he flattened all the brush for an acre about the 

 hunter and the carcass, but the night was so dark that there 

 was no opportunity for a shot. 



Another time a cow was killed by a Grizzly, dragged half- 

 way across the river, and then left lying in the water; 50 yards 

 away was a high cut-bank covered with brush. It was not on 

 the usual trail of the Bears, and as they could not climb up the 

 face, Russell decided to hide there and shoot from it. On 

 getting ready to go, however, he found that he had but one 

 cartridge, and so gave it up. Next morning he learned that the 

 Grizzly had come, but before feasting was careful to break 

 down all the brush on this commanding point, so that had the 

 man been there he would certainly have fallen into the power 

 of the Bear. 



But the cattle-killer is vanishing just as surely as the 

 bufi^alo-killing Grizzly is gone. A great shrinkage of the Big 

 Bear's range is seen to-day, and a wonderful change in the 

 Bear himself. All the old travellers from Lewis and Clark to 

 those of forty years ago aver that the Grizzly had little fear of 

 man, and ofttimes claimed and received from him the right 

 of way. But we have lived to see another mind in the Range- 

 king; we see in him now the exemplar of an ancient law — the 

 beasts are shy in proportion to their bigness that is really in 

 measure of man's eagerness to add them to his bag. The 

 Mouse will let you walk up within a few yards, will even run 



