AFTER BIG-GAME IN WYOMING 211 



he went. Even an old king of the Divide, weighing 

 near 1,000 pounds of sinewy muscular flesh and bone, 

 could not long withstand the effects of a half-inch 

 expanding bullet, propelled by 5 drachms of black 

 powder through a Henry rifled barrel, crashing through 

 his vitals. 



I pulled up short, rapidly reloaded, put two more 

 bullets behind the shoulder of the bear, and laid him 

 dead at our feet. 



An inspection of the premises showed the half- 

 eaten carcass of an elk behind the fallen tree in the 

 centre of the open park. We had disturbed an old 

 grizzly at his dinner, and thus upset his temper. 

 Hence the sudden and savage nature of his charge. 

 We pulled ourselves together ; took the skin and skull 

 of our fallen foe; went on after the bear first seen, 

 but failed to find him ; returned to find and kill yet 

 another bear eating the same elk this one bolted 

 ingloriously for the timber, and was shot in the process 

 and so home to camp. The laugh round the camp- 

 fire that night was on the side of our men. 



Where a country has been at all disturbed by 

 hunters, grizzlies are hardly ever seen in the open. 

 They lie up in the thickest forests during the day, 

 and only travel and feed at night. The bear-hunter 

 is then usually compelled to resort to bear- traps, baited 

 in the manner already described with the carcass of 

 a freshly -killed elk or deer. Such were the base uses 

 to which the lordly elk was occasionally put, in order 

 to satisfy the exigencies of wild western sport. But 

 the tables were occasionally turned on the hunter. 

 There is a ghastly story told of a solitary trapper who 

 was found dead in the great forty-pound trap he had 

 been setting for a bear. Both his arms were im- 



142 



