Trail and Camp-Fire 



within eight or ten feet of a grizzly, which 

 simply bolted off, paying no heed to a hurried 

 shot which I delivered as I poised unsteac'ily 

 on the swaying top of an overthrown dead 

 pine. On yet another occasion, when I roused 

 a big bear from his sleep, he at the first mo- 

 ment seemed to pay little or no heed to me, 

 and then turned toward me in a leisurely way, 

 the only sign of hostility he betrayed being 

 to rufifle up the hair on his shoulders and the 

 back of his neck. I hit him square between 

 the eyes, and he dropped like a pole-axed steer. 

 On another occasion I got up quite close to 

 and mortally wounded a bear, which ran off 

 without uttering a sound until it fell dead ; 

 but another of these grizzlies, which I shot 

 from ambush, kept squalling and yelling every 

 time I hit him, making a great rumpus. On 

 one occasion one of my cow hands and myself 

 were able to run down on foot a she grizzly 

 bear and her cub, which had obtained a long 

 start of us, simply because of the foolish con- 

 duct of the mother. The cub — or more prop- 

 erly the yearling, for it was a cub of the sec- 

 ond year — ran on far ahead, and would have 

 escaped if the old she had not continually 



stopped and sat up on her hind legs to look 



232 



