134 The Grizzly Bear 



Mr. Pope joined me the last of August, and we worked 

 our way back to where I had seen the goats, this being the 

 game we had come to hunt. The animals, however, had 

 moved, and we decided to go farther up toward the divide 

 between the Saskatchewan and the Athabaska Rivers, and 

 finally camped on the Saskatchewan side of the divide, not 

 far from the summit. 



The next morning we saddled two horses and rode up 

 toward the crest, some three miles away, and when near 

 the point where we would have to leave our horses, I looked 

 up to our right and, on top of the ridge above the tim- 

 ber line, saw quite a large grizzly, running for all he was 

 worth. I called Pope's attention to him, and as he was en- 

 tirely out of range, being some eight hundred yards away, 

 and as we supposed from his rapid flight that he had seen 

 us, we sat quietly on the horses and looked at him. The 

 horses, too, saw the bear and they also watched him. For 

 two hundred yards or so he continued his flight, and then, 

 to our amazement, he turned down the ridge and came 

 straight toward us on the jump. This was another story, 

 and, while we both dismounted, I held the horses by their 

 heads so they could not make any disturbance, and Pope 

 stepped a few feet ahead and dropped on one knee ready 

 for a shot in case the bear came near enough. He was armed 

 with a .45-70 rifle, while I had only a Stevens .38 shot-gun 

 for shooting grouse. 



The bear came on downhill at the same mad gait until 

 he had covered half the distance and was not over four 

 hundred yards above us, when he suddenly dashed into a 

 little thicket of fir bushes and disappeared. As he did 

 not come out again we went into a committee of the whole 



