Old Ephraim, the Grisly Bear 61 



game, or of the flocks of the settler and the 

 herds of the ranchman. Bears are very ca- 

 pricious in this respect, however. Some are 

 confirmed game and cattle killers; others are 

 not; while yet others either are or are not ac- 

 cordingly as the freak seizes them, and their 

 ravages vary almost unaccountably, both with 

 the season and the locality. 



Throughout 1889, for instance, no cattle, so 

 far as I heard, were killed by bears anywhere 

 near my range on the Little Missouri in west- 

 ern Dakota ; yet I happened to know that dur- 

 ing that same season the ravages of the bears 

 among the herds of the cowmen in the Big 

 Hole Basin, in western Montana, were very 

 destructive. 



In the spring and early summer of 1888, the 

 bears killed no cattle near my ranch; but in 

 the late summer and early fall of that year a 

 big bear, which we well knew by its tracks, 

 suddenly took to cattle-killing. This was a 

 brute which had its headquarters on some very 

 large brush bottoms a dozen miles below my 

 ranch house, and which ranged to and fro 

 across the broken country flanking the river 

 on each side. It began just before berry time, 

 but continued its career of destruction long 

 after the wild plums and even buffalo berries 



