2 76 The Wilderness Hunter. 



Quite near my ranch, once, a cowboy in my employ 

 found unmistakable evidence of the discomfiture of a bear 

 by a long-horned range cow. It was in the early spring, 

 and the cow with her new-born calf was in a brush- 

 bordered valley. The footprints in the damp soil were very 

 plain, and showed all that had happened. The bear had 

 evidently come out of the bushes with a rush, probably 

 bent merely on seizing the calf ; and had slowed up when 

 the cow instead of flying faced him. He had then begun 

 to walk round his expected dinner in a circle, the cow 

 fronting him and moving nervously back and forth, so that 

 her sharp hoofs cut and trampled the ground. Finally she 

 had charged savagely ; whereupon the bear had bolted ; 

 and, whether frightened at the charge, or at the approach 

 of some one, he had not returned. 



The grisly is even fonder of sheep and pigs than is 

 its smaller black brother. Lurking round the settler's 

 house until after nightfall, it will vault into the fold or sty, 

 grasp a helpless, bleating fleece-bearer, or a shrieking, 

 struggling member of the bristly brotherhood, and bundle 

 it out over the fence to its death. In carrying its prey a 

 bear sometimes holds the body in its teeth, walking along 

 on all-fours and dragging it as a wolf does. Sometimes, 

 however, it seizes an animal in its forearms or in one of 

 them, and walks awkwardly on three legs or two, adopting 

 this method in lifting and pushing the body over rocks 

 and down timber. 



When a grisly can get at domestic animals it rarely 

 seeks to molest game, the former being far less wary and 

 more helpless. Its heaviness and clumsiness do not fit it 



