124 The Grizzly Bear 



sprinting for all they were worth for the mountain. We at 

 once began to shoot, but though we saw dirt fly up, now 

 in front and now behind them, we failed to hit them, and 

 they soon veered to the left and disappeared up a gulch, 

 while we returned to camp, promising each other to be 

 more prudent another time. 



We had already seen the tracks of the old grizzly that 

 had eaten our horse the previous year, and that we had 

 nicknamed "Big Foot." He had evidently made several 

 trips to the old bones, and we decided to make a try for 

 him in the morning. After breakfast, therefore, we walked 

 up to the slide and, as luck would have it, the first thing 

 that we saw was our old friend about four hundred yards 

 away, digging roots and browsing in the open ground. We 

 immediately sat down and held a pow-wow, the subject of 

 debate being whether we should shoot from where we were 

 or try to get nearer. The experience of the previous day 

 finally decided us and, taking careful aim, we both fired at 

 the same time. Big Foot jumped about five feet into the 

 air, turned his nose up the hill, and beat his own best rec- 

 ord into a clump of juniper bushes. We thought we had 

 wounded him and I was about to go to camp and get the 

 dogs, when we saw him appear far up the side of the moun- 

 tain on a boulder that overlooked the valley. And when 

 I planted a ball against the rock directly under him, he 

 turned a complete back somersault and, landing in a cloud 

 of dust among the bushes, disappeared. This time we 

 returned to camp as disgusted with prudence as the day 

 previous we had been out of humor with rashness. 



We now thought we might get a bear by baiting, so we 

 took the body of the grizzly we had shot, roasted it, and 



