THE GRIZZLY BEAR 259 



grizzly, and from what I have learned from others, 

 that this animal to-day has a wholesome fear of 

 man, having learned that he is more than an equal 

 match when armed with a heavy magazine-rifie, and 

 unwounded bears will certainly try to escape, slip- 

 ping quietly away as soon as they see, hear, or smell the 

 enemy. 



I was once riding with an orderly on a natural ter- 

 race just above the valley of a little stream which 

 issues from the Big Horn Mountains. From our 

 elevated position on the plain we could look down 

 into the valley some twenty-five or thirty feet below. 

 We had ridden out from camp expecting to shoot 

 a deer, and moved slowly along the plain a little dis- 

 tance back or away from the terrace where the plain 

 dropped into the valley. From time to time we rode 

 near, and peeped over into the river-bottom, which 

 was partly overgrown with berry-bushes in little 

 clearings, and in other places heavily timbered. I 

 was riding on the inside, or nearer the valley, in order 

 to take the shot. We had not gone over a mile from 

 our camp when, upon approaching the terrace, I saw 

 immediately below me one of the largest grizzly bears 

 I ever beheld. 



He was sitting up in a patch of wild gooseberry 

 bushes, eating the fruit. He growled as soon as he saw 

 us like a dog with a bone, and my pony fairly stood up 

 with fright, and as he wheeled about, desiring to run, he 

 jumped sidewise against the soldier's pony, and one of 

 my feet went through the loop of the lariat hanging at 

 his pommel. The other pony was also much terrified 

 and turned about in his endeavor to escape from the 



