8o HUNTING THE GRISL Y. 



CHAPTER IV. 



HUNTING THE GRISLY. 



IF out in the late "fall or early spring, it is 

 often possible to follow a bear's trail in 

 the snow ; having come upon it either by 

 chance or hard hunting, or else having found 

 where it leads from some carcass on which the 

 beast has been feeding. In the pursuit one 

 must exercise great caution, as at such times 

 the hunter is easily seen a long way off, and 

 game is always especially watchful for any foe 

 that may follow its trail. 



Once I killed a grisly in this manner. It 

 was early in the fall, but snow lay on the 

 ground, while the gray weather boded a storm. 

 My camp was in a bleak, wind-swept valley, 

 high among the mountains which form the 

 divide between the head-waters of the Salmon 

 and Clarke's Fork of the Columbia. All night 

 I had lain in my buffalo-bag, under the lea of 

 a windbreak of branches, in the clump of fir- 

 trees, where I had halted the preceding eve- 

 ning. At my feet ran a rapid mountain tor- 

 rent, its bed choked with ice-covered rocks ; I 

 had been lulled to sleep by the stream's 

 splashing murmur, and the loud moaning of 

 the wind along the naked cliffs. At dawn I 



