322 KEED SHOOTS A BEAR ! 



CHAPTER XXIV. 



Reed shoots a grizzly bear ! A splendid hunting-ground. Wholesale 

 massacre of deer. The Colonel shoots a grizzly. I get one the next 

 night. Another bear. Tendoi pays us a visit. His appreciation of 

 curry. Suspicious tracks. Horse-thieves. Expedition to destroy 

 them. Horses stampeded. The cause. Fishel and I go to see the 

 Crow war-dance. Crow sham fight. Foolish freak of an Englishman. 

 The war-dance. Unpleasant reflections thereat. 



As soon as I got our letters I started for camp, very thankful 

 to get away from such a place. Reed had been ill most of the 

 time, so that I had seen very little of him. He had taken to 

 drinking again, the ginger not satisfying him for long. 

 He told me, during a sober interval, that he had been 

 into Martinsdale since I saw him last, and that, on his way 

 back, he had had to camp out one night without a tent, and 

 that during the night, happening to awake, he had looked up 

 and seen what he took to be an immense bear standing on 

 the opposite side of the fire ; so he snatched up his rifle and 

 fired at it, and it fell, and when he went to see what it was, he 

 found he had shot his favourite horse. He was always on the 



