6 The Grizzly Bear 



looking for, but it interested me enough to send me to the 

 ticket office to make inquiries. A man named Church was 

 ticket agent at the time, and in the course of our conversa- 

 tion he told me that there were a number of people think- 

 ing of going west, and that if I would give him three weeks 

 in which to advertise a trip, and would take charge of two 

 car-loads of emigrants, he would give me a ticket to Port- 

 land, Oregon, and return. 



Naturally I jumped at the chance, though I wished 

 many a time before I was rid of my charges that I had 

 paid my fare. One car-load of settlers was switched off 

 at Chicago bound for San Francisco; the others, with 

 myself in charge, went north-west to St. Paul and beyond. 

 And I dropped the last of them at Mussel Shell, Montana, 

 where there was a large sheep-raising industry. There 

 were now four of us, a carpenter from Maine, a jeweller 

 and a blacksmith from Providence, and myself. I was 

 keeping Melbourne up my sleeve, but had determined to 

 stop off in the West if I could find a locality where I would 

 be apt to get a grizzly, and I had made inquiries all along 

 the road from every one who was supposed to know the 

 country. Of course I had heard the usual number and 

 the usual kind of bear stories, but I was so repeatedly 

 informed that in the hills surrounding Spokane, there 

 were plenty of grizzlies, if any one had the nerve to 

 hunt them, that in the end three of us, the jeweller, the 

 blacksmith, and myself, got off there. 



Spokane was then a town of about fifteen hundred 

 inhabitants. I had brought a camp outfit with me from 

 the East and, when we got off the train, I secured a wheel- 

 barrow, wheeled my trunk and my other belongings down 



