A FALL-OUT WITH A GRIZZLY 
One of the Unexpected Kind, That Makes Trouble 
BY L. C. ROGERS 
WAS working in 
the Tarryall placer 
gold diggings of 
South Park, Colo., 
that summer, and 
the last week in 
August I made ar- 
rangements to go 
with a market hun- 
ter named Ward— 
familiarly known as 
Ny. _| “Buckskin Joe”— 
fi] to the head waters 
PUNY lof the Arkansas 
1w./e4| River, on a hunt. 
We a, a yoke of oxen and a light 
covered wagon from the hotel keeper, en- 
gaged his two boys to go along to tend 
camp and look after the oxen, and on the 
morning of September 1 we, pulled out 
into the park and turned south as far as 
California Gulch, and followed this up as 
far as Twin Lakes, where we made our 
permanent camp. 
On the morning of September 21 we 

broke camp and started back to Tarryall, . 
calculating to sell our deer meat to the 
several mining camps on the way. But 
when we got down to Herriman’s ranch, 
two miles below our camp, he told us that 
a government train of fifty wagons, on its 
way to the Red Mountains to give the 
Ute Indians their annual donations, would 
camp at his ranch that night, and he thought _ 
we might sell some of our meat to them, as 
there were fifty soldiers escorting the train, 
making over one hundred men. 
This was just what we wanted, and we 
went into camp and waited for the train, 
which made its appearance about dark. 
To our agreeable surprise, the soldiers took 
every pound of meat we had, at twenty 
cents a pound, and would have taken as 
much more. 
We did not wish to go back to Tarryall 
empty handed, so we went back to our 
camp to hunt a few days longer, and as 
we had not secured any mountain sheep, 
Joe proposed that we take our dinner with 
us the next day and make an all-day trip 
of it to timber-line, where we would be 
more apt to find these timid animals. 
We started early in the morning and 
climbed the mountain until we arrived near 
the timber-line, close to the head of the 
Arkansas River, which ran through a deep 
gorge fully 200 feet below the ledge of rock 
on which we stood. 
A small rivulet trickled out of the cliff 
near by, and Joe proposed that we rest 
awhile and eat our lunch. To this I agreed, 
and we spread the food out on a shelf of 
the ledge, which also served us for a seat, 
and began eating. Joe was just telling me 
of an adventure he once had with some 
Indians in Arizona, when a band of moun- 
tain sheep came into sight on the other side 
of the gorge; but they as suddenly disap- 
peared behind a large rock. We both 
sprang to our feet, with our guns ready, 
should they appear again from behind the 
rock. In a moment an old ram appeared 
on top of the rock, where he was clearly 
outlined against the sky. 
‘““Now, Lon, there’s the chance of your 
life’’ said Joe. ‘‘ You take him, for I think 
I see another at the base of the rock, and 
when I count three, fire.” 
I took careful aim at the ram, and at the 
word ‘‘ Three” we fired simultaneously. 
At the report, the old ram I had fired at 
pitched headlong from the rock, but 
seemed to bound into a bunch of scrub 
cedars and we couldn’t see whether he 
stayed there or was with the band, which 
skurried over a ridge higher up and disap- 
peared on the other side. 
“‘T don’t know whether I hit the one I 
aimed at or not,” said Joe, “but I believe 
you have got the old fellow all right, and 
