10 The Grizzly Bear 



when the hunting season was on, I ran this shop until 

 1888. 



By that time the town had grown, I had bought prop- 

 erty that had increased in value, I had got married, I had 

 a home and an income, and I sold the blacksmith shop, 

 devoted myself to hunting grizzlies and contracting for 

 the building of houses in the town, and soon had most of 

 my means invested in building materials. Then, in 1889, 

 came the big Spokane fire. It burned the greater part of the 

 city, wiped out my building materials, and as I carried no 

 insurance, came near to wiping me out too; and what the 

 fire only began, the hard times that followed completed. 



I now found myself with an undiminished interest in 

 hunting, and no means to gratify my inclinations. For a 

 time I removed to Missoula, Montana, worked in a tax- 

 idermist's shop in the winter, and photographed and 

 hunted during the summer; but I was soon to find a more 

 congenial occupation. I was, it is needless to say, no 

 longer the tyro of six years before. I had long since 

 freed my mind from the preconceptions of lies and legends, 

 and had worked out my own hunting lore from my own 

 experience and observation. I was, it is true, familiar 

 with only a section of the grizzly's range, and had pene- 

 trated but a few hundred miles in either direction from 

 my base of operations. But I had always had strongly 

 developed what some people call the bump of locality and 

 direction, and what others more poetical refer to as "the 

 sixth sense of the homing pigeon." I have, it seems to me 

 now, always been at home in the woods. I have never 

 been in any part of the country, in any mountains or any 

 place, where it was difficult for me to find my way. I 



