December, 1905 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



401 



men would have attempted. She started down the canyon 

 with one guide, her husband and the other guide remaining 

 to make camp. It took an hour to get down, the horses 

 cautious, yet slipping and stumbling in the dusk. At one 

 place they crossed a bog punctured with gopher holes. A 

 step in one of them would mean a broken leg for the horse 

 and unknown misery for all the party. At the foot of the 

 canyon the riders dismounted, tied their horses, shed their 

 coats and all possible impedimenta, and climbed to the ridge 

 where the elk had been seen. The strain, heat and dust of 

 such a climb are indescribable, but once up Mrs. Bemis was 

 near enough for a shot. Dark as it was in the twilight, her 

 first one found its mark. 



Before the guide could finish dressing the buck, which 

 proved to be a nine-pointer, the chill of the mountain night 

 was upon them. The camp was at least seven miles away. 

 It was hours, and the inky dark, before a wearied, bruised, 

 half-frozen, aching hunstwoman came within sight of the 

 camp fire; and when she crawled into her bed after supper 

 it was with the firm conviction that she would never be 

 able to rise again. At daylight, however, she was up 

 again and after the other elk which the law allowed her. 

 He proved to be a twelve-point bull, with massive antlers. 

 But that is, 

 after all, noth- 

 ing for a wom- 

 an who is a 

 natural shot, 

 and has a rec- 

 ord at the trap 

 of 19 clay 

 birds out of 

 21, at 25 

 yards' rise. 



Mr. and 

 Mrs. Bemis 



any effect. Two more shells were left in her rifle. As she 

 drew down on him with desperate determination for the next 

 shot he loped off into the bushes and disappeared. Evi- 

 dently he had not located the direction of the shots and was 

 simply seeking to escape under cover. It might have been a 

 relief to see him go, but realizing that she was alone on the 

 side of an almost perpendicular mountain covered with slide 

 rock, and that she was surrounded by five bears, one of them 

 wounded, also that she must remain until the men should 

 return to find her, in sheer desperation she made all the noise 

 she could to keep off the enemy, rolling rocks down the moun- 

 tain and calling. She was thus engaged when she heard the 

 shouts of the returning men. 



On the Idaho trip Mr. and Mrs. Bemis tried hard to 

 bag a mountain goat, which means the highest and most 



Experiences in the Jackson Hole Hunting Region 



made one hunting trip with Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Thompson 

 Seton into what is known as the Clearwater country, in the 

 Bitter Root Mountains of Idaho. The traveling in that 

 region is indescribably rough. Wyoming is a peaceful val- 

 ley compared with Idaho. No tenderfoot should ever make 

 his first hunting trip in that district unless he has extreme 

 powers of endurance. In her attempt to get a bear Mrs. 

 Bemis was left alone, one afternoon, on a mountain side, 

 while the men pursued a wounded bear. While she was 

 waiting a huge cinnamon bear walked out from the bushes, 

 twenty feet in front of her, his jaws dripping with the juice 

 of sarvis berries, his head swaying from side to side. She 

 thought he was the wounded one, and that he had been driven 

 around in a circle. Half paralyzed by his sudden appear- 

 ance she fired five shots at the huge, lumbering bulk without 



dangerous 

 climbing that 

 can be imag- 

 ined. It may 

 also mean 

 sleeping all 

 night near the 

 summit, with- 

 out food, tent, 

 bedding or 

 other protec- 

 tion than a soli- 

 tary blanket; 

 blistered feet, 

 aching bones, 

 terrifying haz- 

 torturing 

 heat on the climb during the day, and at night a bed in a 

 snowbank; and, alas! it usually means a vain quest. 



" One of our most alarming experiences," said Mrs. 

 Bemis, " was a ride we were forced to take through a burn- 

 ing forest. On every side the flames snatched at us, and, 

 worst of all, from the ground. Burning logs lay across the 

 trail, and over them the horses had to step or jump. A log 

 two feet in diameter, covered with leaping flames, does not 

 make an alluring hurdle. My horse took them bravely and 

 steadily, but I was afraid my skirt would catch fire, and I 

 was kept busy holding it away from the flames. I was also 

 afraid my horse's tail would be burned, and I kept watching 

 to save him from that. 



" Burning trees were falling all around us, across the trail 

 and in every direction. The guides went ahead of us, strik- 

 ing the trees we were to pass to see if they were yet ready to 

 fall, and to guard, if possible, against our being struck by 

 one on its descent. Even with that precaution we were liable 



