Old Ephraim, the Grisly Bear. 273 



does not betray any great hunger for a few days after its 

 appearance ; but in a short while it becomes ravenous. 

 During the early spring, when the woods are still entirely 

 barren and lifeless, while the snow yet lies in deep drifts, 

 the lean, hungry brute, both maddened and weakened by 

 long fasting, is more of a flesh eater than at any other 

 time. It is at this period that it is most apt to turn true 

 beast of prey, and show its prowess either at the expense 

 of the wild game, or of the flocks of the settler and the 

 herds of the ranchman. Bears are very capricious in this 

 respect, however. Some are confirmed game, and cattle- 

 killers ; others are not ; while yet others either are or are 

 not accordingly 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 western Dakota ; yet I happened to 

 know that during 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 



