8 The Black Bear 



weighed over five pounds) had looked to be half dead 

 with cold and misery, and the snow and slush was over 

 their heads; but for all that they reached the tree 

 ahead of us, and started up the rough trunk like so 

 many cats. I just managed to grab the hindmost of 

 them by one leg as she was scrambling out of reach, 

 and after a good deal of squalling, clawing, and biting, 

 the little woolly ball was landed in one of the gunny- 

 sacks, the mouth tied up, and the package deposited 

 on a log out of the way. Then we began figuring out 

 ways and means of catching the two cubs in the big 

 fir tree. The rough trunk of this old settler shot up 

 forty feet from the ground without a limb, and the 

 cubs looked down at us from the lowest branches, 

 pushing out their upper lips and uttering short 

 ^'whoofs,'' exactly as a grown bear would have done. 

 There seemed to be but one way to get them alive, and 

 this was to shin up the old tree and shake them down 

 as one would ripe plums. Spencer and Jack agreed to 

 catch them before they could again take to a tree, if I 

 would undertake the climbing and shaking: and after 

 some little talk I closed the bargain. The hardest 

 part of the task seemed to me to be the shinning of the 

 old tree. The rest looked easy, but that was before 

 I had tried it. Any one who has never had the pleasure 

 of dislodging a bear from the limb of a tree by shaking 

 is apt to think it an easy matter; but he will change 

 his mind after a little experience. 



