184 TRUE BEAR STORIES. 



trees served as corner posts for a pen built 

 of twenty-inch logs, "gained" at the cor- 

 ners and fastened together with stout oak 

 pins. The pen was about twelve feet long, 

 four feet high and five feet wide inside, 

 and the door was made of pine logs sunk 

 into the ground and wedged and pinned se- 

 curely. A door of four-inch planks, so 

 heavy that it required three men to raise it, 

 was set in front, between oak guides pinned 

 vertically to the trees and suspended by 

 a rope running over a pulley and back to 

 a trigger that engaged with a pivoted stick 

 of oak, to which the bait was to be fast- 

 ened. Five days were consumed in the con- 

 struction of the trap, and while the work 

 was going on a bear visited the camp at 

 night and stampeded all the saddle and 

 pack animals out of the canyon. 



A German prospector named Sparkuhle, 

 who was staying temporarily in the camp, 

 was cured of a severe case of skepticism 

 that night. Sparkuhle believed nothing 

 that he could not see, and he declared, with 



