Sept. 28, 1901.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
247 
Game in [ Bagg'agfe Cars* 
In conversation with Mr. Chas, S. Fee, the generjil pas- 
senger agent of the Northern Pacific Railroad, this mat- 
ter of game losses en route was brought up in a general 
way. Mr. Fee was unaware of any such practice on the 
Northern Pacific hne. 
He held that if such a practice was in vogue on any 
line, the sportsmen, by failing to report their losses to 
the proper railroad authorities, were in a measure to 
blame themselves. The quickest and easiest way to put 
an end to this state of afiairs would be to report, in writ- 
ing, to the general passenger agent of the road, stating 
all the circumstances connected with the shortage, giving 
date, etc. While reporting your loss would not at the 
time restore the lost birds by any means, yet the result 
of each sportsman reporting such loss would in time in- 
sure immunity from itirther depredations. If purloining 
of game was regularly going on it was the easiest thing 
in the world for the railroad company lo stop it in time, 
provided the sportsmen took the trouble to promptly 
report their losses in writing. 
From those who claimed to have suffered with whom 
T have talk-ed I would infer that they felt a good deal 
like the old woman's eel, that didn't mind being skinned 
because it had gotten U5ed to it. When counting their 
bag, dumped otit upon the kitchen table at home, they 
have simply shrugged their shoulders and thanked theii' 
stars that it had been no worse. 
But no first-class road, that spends many thousands of 
dollars annually advertising its game possibilities to the 
hunting fraternity, would tolerate such toll taking on the 
part" of its employees if it knew it. And as long as the 
hunters pocket their losses in silence the powers that be 
behind the offending roads are innocent of any knowl- 
edge and cannot bring about the desired reform. So, if 
the remedy for such things is to complain to the authori- 
ties of the road, so long will this condition of affairs con- 
tinue if those who are interested suffer in silence. Rail- 
roads are run on system, and the receipt of complaints 
because of shortage in the count will not go unnoticed, 
and in the end undoubtedly will bring forth reform along 
these lines. 
The remedy would seem to rest entirely with the 
hunter. If he does his duty the guilty baggageman next 
season will have to either shoot or buy his game instead 
of picking- it up from the floor of the baggage car, because 
the lattef opportunity will be taken away from him. 
Charles Crist.\doro. 
A Quest of Bear. 
Joe Kipp's Bear Outfit. 
As threatened some time ago, I got away the first week 
in May, after my long-lost grizzly, which Joe Kipp, my 
friend, at Blackfoot, reported to be not far from his place 
uu the Blackfoot reservation. Joe Kipp was to have been 
with us, also old Joe Brown, formerly of the Hudson Bay 
service. Joe Kipp got tangled up in a horse round-up 
and could not get away for the hunt. Joe Brown got a 
wrong direction from some source or other, missed our 
camp on the Two Medicine, and for a week wandered 
round in the St. Mary's country, looking for us. Our 
l -ii-ty, as it started out, was made up of Madam and her 
.21, Billy Hofer, Collins Anderson,' a young man of the 
reservation who knows the mountains very well; Abe 
Craton. the cook, and myself. Old John Monroe and 
his wife blew in later, and so did Jack Monroe, the best 
hrnter on the reservation, much to our subsequent joy 
and satisfaction. 
Now'it has ever been a part of my personal creed that 
all a man needs in the mountains is a tomato can and 
ihree cartridges. How it ever happened that I got caught 
out with the layout we carried I don't know, though may- 
be Joe Kipp and the Madam could explain. There was 
f.now in the Badger Creek Caiion, Joe reported, and we 
would have to go to the Two Medicine country. Hence 
wc could take a wagon just as well as not, and of course 
ii we could take a wagon we could take a whole lot of 
things, all the comforts of home. They put a cook stove 
in the wagon, and a wall tent, 14 by 16 feet in size, one 
-of the reservation round-up tents, big as a house. More- 
L-\er — oh! shame be it said — they put a feather mattress 
and two pillows in the bed outfit for the little wall tent. 
At the start from Chicago Madam had insisted on taking 
an umbrella, though I pointed out in despair that it was 
a certain hoodoo, and cited many cases at law to prove 
the same. 
We only got stuck on one hill that day, but we had to 
camp at the old Bull Corral, three miles below Two 
Medicine Lake, the first night, six miles from the bait 
which Collins had put out; at which, just eight days be- 
iure, he had seen a big grizzly eating, and had hence 
wired me to hustle on out to the reservation. Our team 
was played out that first night, and could not ford the 
river, as we would have been obliged to do three times 
liad we gone up further. Then the river rose. The folks 
pitched the tent, with its face to the wind. It snowed a 
foot one morning. It blew. The big round-up tent 
leaked, because tho cowpunchers had in idle moments 
rainy days shot its roof full of holes, just for the fun 
of the thing. This was the worst tenderfoot camp I 
ever did see in my life, to which effect I frankly declared 
myself. We were four miles from the railroad, and 
could hear the trains of th« Great Northern Railway go 
by at all hours of the day and night, Midvale station 
being only four miles away down stream. Now, wasn't 
that a fine prospect for a long-lost grizzly? I wouldn't 
have believed it of myself if I hadn't seen it. 
But now, here is where the odd part of it began to come 
in. While the others were making camp that first night 
Collins and I took a fast ride up to the place where he 
had seen the grizzly a week before. We got there just 
before dark. The carcass of the horse was gone! 
We searched the little glade over carefully with the 
glasses before going near the place where the bait was 
left. At last we saw a little black bunch of something 
on the snow, and on the backs of snow near by tracks — 
very large tracks. We descended to the little coulee and 
.examined the spot. 
The bear had been there, that was sure enough. It had 
iragg^e.d the body of the horse 50 yards down into the 
coulee, and cached it carefully, rooting over it a lot of 
dirt and grass, as a dog would cover a bone. Then it 
had come again, and had continued to come at different 
times until it had eaten that horse up entirely! It had 
torn apart the frame, split apart the skull, stripped the 
bones, crushed the leg bones even, and broken up the 
backbone. Only a few narrow strips of hide were left. 
It had been a very big, very hungry, and very strong 
grizzly, which had done this work in the little coulee. 
All about were evidences of the tremendous size and 
power of the creature. Its trail lay in the snow. Here 
was where it had lain down in the snow — a vast imprint. 
Here were its tracks, deep as a horse's hoof-print, long 
as a gun stock. 
Here had been the chance for my grizzly, an easy 
chance, and for a splendid bear. How I did curse all 
umbrellas and feather beds! For, easily enough, I could 
see that I had forfeited my right to the long-lost bear, 
which otherwise I should have killed in twenty-four hours 
after pitching camp. 
Well, it was no use. Opportunity does not knock 
twice at any man's door. I had tried to save a little time 
by waiting till they sent for me, and the little time had 
cost me my grizzly. I was madder than any grizzly that 
ever trod the hills. 
There had now been two horses put out after my bear, 
both under Joe Kipp's advice. The first one was put out 
early in April, and it was eaten up by coyotes. The 
second one, which Collins had gotten thus far into the 
hills over the snow, only after the hardest of hard work, 
had been placed just where Joe Kipp had said the first 
grizzlies would come, near a certain high, bare ridge. 
His judgment was verified perfectly by this mass of 
tangled hair and bones which made the remnant of the 
unfortunate cayuse. Now there was still another crippled 
horse back at the reservation. Two Indians tried a day 
to get it up to us, but failed. Faithful Collins got on 
hsi sagacious little claybank Bucky, and the next day 
this third offering to the rapacious grizzly was lying 
at the same spot where the first bear had done his work. 
After that, it was simply a case of sit down in Camp 
Tenderfoot, enjoy tlie wind that blew in at the face of 
the tent, listen to the little birds sing, and hope, hope as 
hard as we could. It had been at least three or four days 
since the bear had eaten the last of the bait, and though 
of course he might hang around and check up there 
at some later date, the probabilities were that he would 
not show up for som.e days at best, if indeed at all. 
Those were days in which I made Camp Tenderfoot a 
desolation, a byword and a reproach, until at last Madam 
had to take me in hand. '"IJut see, now, you brought 
an umbrella," I could not help adding always. "You 
brought an umbrella on a trip for a grizzly bear! We've 
got a cook stove, and a wall tent, and we're after a 
grizzly bear! We've got a feather bed, and want a griz- 
zly! Avaunt! Tell it not in Gath! Whisper to me, 
would any self-respecting grizzly be killed by a duffer 
who takes a Cook stove and a feather bed, and camps 
with the wind in his face, where he can hear the railroad 
trains?" 
Bear and Beaver Siga. 
Camp Wind-in-the-Face was located directly on the 
bank of the Two Medicine River, in a little, open glade 
directly below the mountains, a spot as beautiful as one 
could ask. We found that the trout would not yet rise to 
fly or bait, and the country round about seemed to show 
ver}' little sign of game. We saw some "beaver sticks" 
whiclf had lodged along the stream near the camp, and 
discovered that the entire flat opposite to us across the 
river was occupied by a series of beaver dams. Whether 
or not one coitld have done some business in peltry on 
the other willow flats between our camp and the upper 
end of Two Medicine Lake was something which we 
had not time to prove. 
The weather was very cloudy, and on one morning it 
set in to snow, and kept at that industry with a steadiness 
.uid precision to be found nowhere except in the Rocky 
Mountains. We had more than a foot of snow by night, 
and on the following morning the entire landscape was 
dazzlingly beautiful in its covering of white. By the 
means of glasses we could see tracks of some sort of game 
crossing a little, open park two or three miles up the 
mountain. On the day previous I had made a solitary pil- 
grimage some four or five miles up the slopes and back 
again, and I had found fres'h elk sign and also the track 
of one black bear. On this day Collins and I resolved 
to make another exploration. We found the snow too 
wet for successful snowshoeing, but were able to pull -and 
plunge through it in some way until we got high enough 
up on the mountains to strike the old snowdrifts, where 
we found the footing was firm enough to allow us to walk 
directly over the old snow. We had a delightful climb, 
albeit the wet snow soaked us, thoroughly. From a high 
point, above the timber line, we looked over the surround- 
ing country carefull}', but could find no trace of moun- 
tain sheep, elk or bear in our vicinity. When we started 
down through the heavy timber toward camp, a journey 
of some four or five miles, we ran across the fresh sign 
of five elk. One of the trails spread out off from tTie 
rest, and, following this, we found the trail of a big 
momitain lion, which was evidently interested in the same 
business as ourselves. As this elk seemed to be heading 
up toward the Two Medicine Lake, we did not allow our 
curiosity to lead us very far, as we were not looking 
for elk. We did, however, find the trail of a black 
bear, probably the one I had seen before. 
At last, after a week of shilly-shallying around this 
impossible location, we summed up fortitude enough to 
move camp. The stream was low enough to be forded 
without damaging any of our household goods, and 
Madame, with her escort, was able- to get up to the lake 
without fording the riA^er. which latter she declared a thing 
absolutely impossible. We, therefore, pitched camp late 
that day, but in a delightful little glade on the banks of 
one of the prettiest lakes to be found in the Rockies. 
Here we found the trout in more amiable mood, and on 
one day Billy Hofer and Billy Ellsworth, who came up 
to visit us from Midvale Station, took something like 
twenty-eight very nice trout, which we found were ex- 
ceedingly good to eat. Here we were visited also one 
morning by old John Monroe and his wife, the same 
couple whose tepee we found four winters before, located 
close-to where our camp now stood. Old John is getting 
pretty feeble, and is no longer able to do much moun- 
tain hunting. He said that he had come up the lake to do 
some fishing, as they were out of meat at his house. He 
went back with a couple of dozen trout, which our folks 
caught for him. as well as certain other things which 
seemed to delight him somewhat. He promised to come 
up again and help us in the bear campaign, and his coun- 
sel we valued very much. 
Collins and I were very much disturbed over the fact 
that no bear came in to eat at our second bait. One 
morning when we went up we saw a couple of big coyotes 
eating at the horse, and as coyotes are worth five dollars 
apiece, Collins thought he would like to take their pelts 
into camp. I had by this time grown entirely discouraged, 
and did not think we were going to see any bear, so I 
consented to the experiment of coyote trapping at our 
bear bait. We put three steel traps out here, under the 
tutelage of old John Monroe, who shook his head dubious- 
ly over this way of going bear hunting. 
■'Myself," said he, "s'pose I want 'um bear, I not put 
trap here. But s'pose bear come, probably he not mind 
trap. S'pose he smell 'um trap, probably he make some 
scare. Myself, I do not know." 
This we figured out to mean that leaving wolf traps at a 
hear bait might or might not scare away the bear if he 
tame into that neighborhood. I was so disgusted and 
desperate by this time that T had given up the bear and 
was willing to catch a coyote or anything else. In further- 
ance of this same scheme, Collins and I cut off a fore 
shoulder of the bait and made a drag of about five miles 
through the most desperate and tangled forest that one 
ever went against. We hung up this forequarter upon a 
sharpened stump about a mile from the falls of the Two 
Medicine. Into it wc threw an abundance of strychnine, 
and then we only hoped that some coyote or mountain lion 
would be fool enough to come and mingle with our fliesh 
meats. We did not think it very likely that the bear would 
troiible the forequarter, and even if it did, I had been 
told thait no such event was ever known as a bear being 
troubled by eating strychnine, as it seems to agree with 
them. We had no way of proving this, although we were 
taking rather unsportsmanlike chances in the matter, for, 
although the poisoned bait remained on the sapling for 
three or four days, nothing ever bothered it. Our coyote 
industry seemed to be as unfortttnate as our bear hunt. 
Locky Jack. 
■'If Jack Monroe would come up here," said Abe Craton, 
the cook, "you'd see things change mighty quick. He's 
the luckiest man you ever did see about hunting. It 
don't make any difference what time of day or night he 
starts out, he always has meat when he comes back. Now. 
you mark what I tell you, if Jack comes up here, you'll 
get something." 
Well, one evening Jack hiiuself appeared at the camp, as 
I'lond-moustached, smiling and good-natured as ever he 
\\ as some years ago, when he was on at New York for 
the Sportsmen's Show. He came driving into our camp a 
couple of horses which he said he had picked up four 
miles below on the river. It is needless to say that we 
fell on liis neck and told him that he was our prisoner. 
.Vor, indeed, did he get back home for a week, although he 
had told his people that he was only going away over 
r.ight. 
And now witness the accuracy of Abe's prophecy. 
From that moment the luck began to change. On the 
first morning after his arrival in camp. Jack, Collins and 
myself lit out bright and early, and started in on a 
campaign of hard work, which never let up so long as 
Jack Monroe remained around. The doctrine of good luck 
and that of hard work are very much alike. Jack Monroe 
certainly is a worker in the mountains. I never have 
seen a more indefatigable hunter nor a better mountain 
climber. He hunts because he loves to hunt, and no 
man is fit to be called a guide who does not have, that 
sanie hunting instinct with him. Jack Monroe might 
be seventy, eighty or a hundred years old, and yet on 
the last day of his life he would be as eager to go afield 
as he was when he was a boy. 
We now started out on a campaign of drags. We 
went up to our foreshoulder near the Two Medicine 
Falls, and cut out a section from the back of the shoulder 
and made a goody heavy drag. Then we started directly 
up through the tangled timber toward the foot of the 
mountain where I first killed my sheep four years ago, 
and which the boys called after me. How the hoKses 
got through is something which I cannot understand, but 
they patiently plodded along, and we laid a wide trail of 
scent behind us. When we had gotten up to the foot of 
the slide rock, still on horseback, we dismounted, and 
Jack, on foot, started across the cation which separated 
us from the foot of Rising Wolf Mountain. He said he 
wanted to get the drag completed across the mouths of 
all these carious, which led down into the valley from 
back in the mountain^. "Then, if any bear comes down 
in and strikes our drag, he will be sure to follow it around 
to the bait," said he, in explanation. 
I could see that he was covering practically the same 
territory as that indicated by old John Monroe as the 
natural traveling range of the bears. When he returned 
from the slope of Rising Wolf Mountain, he said he had 
found the trail of a grizzly and two cubs, which had 
apparently gone on in around the shoulder of Rising 
Wolf, and up above the upper lake. He also saw the 
trails of four or five sheep, which had crossed a snow- 
bank not very far up the mountain. Collins that morning 
saw a white goat on Rising Wolf, and on the day previous 
Collins and I had seen a very fine big-horn ram upon the 
mountain on which we were now stopping. All in all, it 
began to look as though there might be some game in the 
country. 
We three now laboriously comp^leted the wide circle of 
our drag, following around the skirt of my mountain and 
crossing over the narrow, knife-backed ridge which marks 
the pass between the Cut Bank country and the Two 
Medicine country. Here we could look far down, on 
either side a sharp declivity. Below us lay black timber, 
heavy enough and wide enough to hold many bears. This 
country we crossed on horseback, following an ancient 
trail which Jack told me was the old Kootenai Indian 
hunting trail- These Indians used to come on horseback 
over a pass which lay back of us. Then they followed 
around the edge of this Two Medicine Valley, crossed the 
