CHAPTER XV. 



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 ex- 

 ercise great caution, as at such times the hunter is easily 

 seen a long way off, and game is always especially watch- 

 ful 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 evening. At 

 my feet ran a rapid mountain torrent, 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 rose and shook myself 



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