THE GRIZZLY BEAK. 219 1 



tell the simple truth when I say that for a few strides he 

 actually caught up to Frank, who made most admirable 

 time; then I shot the Bear dead. We examined him care- 

 fully; he was a small one, not weighing more than two 

 hundred pounds, and was shot all to pieces. Each of the 

 five bullets I had fired had struck him; one hip and one 

 fore-arm were broken; the lower jaw was shot away; there 

 was one shot in the neck, and one through and through 

 behind the shoulder. It is never safe to fool with a Grizzly; 

 he may run away as fast as an Elk, or he may not. 



There is something to me fascinating beyond measure in 

 hunting the Grizzly, the hardest of all animals to approach, 

 not excepting the Sheep. The extreme difficulty of seeing 

 him or finding him in the daylight, and the lonely haunts 

 he has now retired to, make him more difficult to bring to 

 bag than even the Sheep. None seems in better keeping 

 with his surroundings than he. It must be a poor, shallow 

 nature that can not enjoy the absolute stillness and perfect 

 beauty of such evenings as the hunter must sometimes pass 

 alone when watching near a bait for Bears. 



One such experience I have especially in mind. What 

 an evening it was, both for its beauty and its good fortune! 

 I think of it still as a red-letter day, as 



One from many singled out, 



One of those heavenly days that can not die. 



More than two thousand feet below, the head-waters of 

 the Snake gather themselves, and in its infancy the great 

 river sends up its baby-murmur. Behind me, the giant 

 heads of the Teton cut the rosy evening sky, sharp and 

 clear, as does the last thousand feet of the Matterhorn. I 

 was comfortably ensconced in the warm, brown pine-needles 

 that smothered up the great knees of a gnarled nut-pine, 

 whose roots- offered me an arm-chair, and around me, for 

 the space of two or three acres, the short, crisp green- 

 sward, that is only found where snow has lain for months 

 previously, was spangled and starred all over with such 

 blue and white and red mountain flowers as are nowhere 

 else seen in this land. 



