Old Ephraim 343 



whose inaccessible wildness and ruggedness a bear 

 would find a safe retreat. After some time we came 

 to where other valleys, with steep, grass-grown 

 sides, covered with sage brush, branched out from 

 it, and we followed one of these out. There was 

 plenty of elk sign about, and we saw several black- 

 tail deer. These last were very common on the 

 mountains, but we had not hunted them at all, as 

 we were in no need of meat. But this afternoon we 

 came across a buck with remarkably fine antlers, and 

 accordingly I shot it, and we stopped to cut off and 

 skin out the horns, throwing the reins over the heads 

 of the horses and leaving them to graze by them 

 selves. The body lay near the crest of one side of 

 a deep valley, or ravine, which headed up on the 

 plateau a mile to our left. Except for scattered trees 

 and brushes the valley was bare ; but there was heavy 

 timber along the crests of the hills on its opposite 

 side. It took some time to fix the head prop 

 erly, and we were just ending when Merrifield 

 sprang to his feet and exclaimed: &quot;Look at the 

 bears!&quot; pointing down into the valley below us. 

 Sure enough there were two bears (which afterward 

 proved to be an old she and a nearly full-grown cub) 

 traveling up the bottom of the valley, much too far 

 off for us to shoot. Grasping our rifles and throw 

 ing off our hats we started off as hard as we could 

 run, diagonally down the hillside, so as to cut them 

 off. It was some little time before they saw us, 

 when they made off at a lumbering gallop up the 

 valley. It would seem impossible to run into two 



