CARIBOU AND BROWN BEAR 179 



The bear turned as I fired, reared and looked at us, 

 then trotted to the left toward the slope of the hill which 

 he had been going around, as I missed him with the last 

 sheU. 



All other cartridges were in my coat two miles in the 

 rear. Mike and I sat down on the bank. The bear 

 went up the hill path a little distance, turned and glared 

 at us. The empty gun lay across my knees. Mike 

 shook his fist at the great brute, cursed him passionately 

 and shouted, ''I'll come up and club you to death." 

 But Bruin slowly turned and walked out of sight. 



''Well," said Elting, w^hen he heard the result of the 

 chase which he had watched almost to the last from his 

 lookout, "you had all the fun of him ting the bear without 

 the trouble of packing him home." 



Even if the latter part of our stay in this httle camp 

 was dulled by frequent rain, the evenings were enhvened 

 by the stories of two of the sailors w^ho had packed for us. 

 One of these men, Ed Taylor, a tall, lanky young fellow, 

 spent the summer going down the Yukon in search of his 

 fortune, and was stranded on the beach at Nome when 

 Kleinschmidt picked him up. 



"I never had such a miserable time in my life," he 

 said. "I am a graduate of an agricultural college and 

 was working on my father's fruit farm in the State of 

 Washington when the idea came into my head to find 

 a gold mine in Alaska. My father was opposed to the 

 notion, because he wanted to make an agriculturist 

 of me. But I thought I was a geologist. A bunch of 

 us went over the White Pass on our own feet and drifted 

 down to Dawson. There was nothing doing there, so 

 we went on down the river and finally landed at Fort 

 Gibbon at the mouth of the Tanana River. Pardon me, 

 Dr. Young, but Fort Gibbon is the worst hole in Alaska. 



