248 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Sept. 28, 1901. 
Cut Bank Pass at the foot of the great lateral moraine 
which marks the edge of the valley at .that place, and so 
went on down into the prairie country where lay the 
buffalo and their dear friends, the Piegans. A little 
bunch of Kootenais would make trouble for quite a good- 
sized party of Blackfeet in the old days, and it is said 
that the presence of the Kootenai war parties added to the 
I'eluctance of the plains people to go into the mountains. 
The Piegans have never been a race of mountain hunters, 
and there are only a few of them who care to go into the 
mountains even to-da^^ 
The ancient trail was an admirably engineered affair, 
and it led us around some beautiful heights and presented 
to us some magnificent views. The plucky little plains 
horses held to it, and the drag still followed us, making a 
wide trail which he who ran might read, were he bear or 
coyote. We passed on the high ridge near the Cut Bank 
Pass and the old camping ground of the Boundary Sur- 
vey party, or perhaps that of the Geological wSurvey. It 
was located in a little flat on top of a beautiful eminence. 
Near this we crossed the very face of the big mass of 
half-cemented slide rock which marks the edge of the 
moraine. Here there had been a landslide which had 
quite obliterated the trail, yet the horses managed to 
pick their way across and up the face of this acclivity in 
a fashion very wonderful to witness. So now at length 
we gained plenty of elevation and could see entirely over 
the Two Medicine Valley. In this valley we had laid an 
irregular semi-circle of trail, leading out from and back 
to our bear bait, and covering all a distance of perhaps 
ten or twelve miles. We finished the work of that day 
by coming in above the bear bait and leaving our drag 
at the bait. 
Curiously enough, we found one of the steel traps at the 
bait sprung. Also we found tracks in the soft gi'ound — 
tracks as though some one had put down a piece of mud 
on the steel trap with his hand. "Here's where old John 
put his hand when he was setting this trap," said Jack 
Monroe. "I must study the old man's way of setting steel 
traps, for he's pretty near headquarters on trapping 
things." 
So much for reading sign when we were off our guard. 
We now started down through the thick wood toward 
camp, following the drag which Collins and I had fii'st 
laid. About a mile and a half down the wood old John 
Monroe, Collins and myself had built a dead fall for the 
little black bear which was reputed to be infesting that 
neighborhood, and which I took to be the same bear whose 
sign I had seen across the river. We had by this time 
given up the notion that there would be any bear at our 
bait, and were resolved to catch this little fellow at any 
hazard. I would rather see old John Monroe build a dead 
fall and catch a little black bear any day than to shoot the 
same little fellow myself. I was, it must be remembered, 
only looking for grizzly myself. W^ell. we had not gone 
half-Avay down to this dead fall, which, by the way. we 
found untouched, when we saw bear sign right along the 
trail of the old drag, and this sign was heading up toward 
the bait. 
"I'll bet a thousand dollars," said Jack Monroe, with the 
sudden solenmity of conviction, "that it was that bear 
sprung the steel trap. Now, what shall we do, go back 
and take up those blasted traps, or go on to camp ?" 
It, was growing late, and we were all very tired, so I 
told the boys we would go on to camp and let the steel 
traps take care of themselves. We had before this time 
reset the trap and hence there still remained the original 
bait, surrounded with three steel traps and with a ten-mile 
drag out through the best bear country of that region. I 
must admit that this was a most tenderfoot performance, 
to trp to trap coyotes at a bear bait, but no otie could be 
blamed for it except myself, and I had by this time aban- 
doned hope, as before mentioned. 
At camp Jack Monroe read to me a long lecture on the 
virtue of neA^er abandoning the aforesaid hope. "You 
want to remember that the last day in camp gives you ten 
times as good a chance as the first day," said he. "You 
are then just getting acquainted with the country, getting 
your drags all laid, and, besides, are by then just giving 
your game a chance to get in on j'our bait. I'll bet you 
anything you like that we'll get a bear yet." 
I brushed the sad tears from my eyes and told him that 
I admired him, but that his judgment was pretty blamed 
poor. 
Yet on that very next morning note what happened. 
Collins, Jack and I again started out to see what was 
going on at our bear bait, being now satisfied that there 
was at least one little black bear in that valley, and de- 
voutly hoping that he would get his back broken in the 
dead fall and not go fooling arotmd our bear bait, as we 
did not want to shoot him. We all three went up to our 
lookout point above the bait on the high hillside, some- 
thing more than a quarter of a mile away fi-om the horse. 
Here we sat down and carefully inspected the bait with 
the field glasses. 
'Tt looks as though there was something had kind of 
covered up the neck of the horse," said Collins, after u 
long study of the bait. We alt looked, and sure enough 
there seemed to be a little grass, or something, which 
seemed to cover the neck of the horse from complete 
view. 
"It may be that blamed little bear," said Jack, but Col- 
lins thought that perhaps the coyotes had been kicking 
around in the grass there again. Nothing seemed to 
have bothered the steel traps, and, after a careful look, we 
concluded that there had been nothing at the bait. Collins 
then mounted his faithful little "Bucky" and started off up 
through the woods to do some more dragging, it being our 
deliberate intention to cover that entire country with so 
many meat trails that no guilty bear could possibly 
escape. 
Jack and I went down to the bait to make a personal 
inspection of it. To our intense astonishment, we found 
that the glasses had not shown us the entire truth. There, 
against the neck of the horse and along its back bone, was 
a little covering of grass and dirt. There were marks in 
the moist earth of the little glade as though some big hog 
had been rooting there, carelessly indifferent. On the side 
of the hore there were some fresh strips of flesh torn away 
from the rib. Item, there were three steel pens, every one 
of them sprung! 
"By the great old Harry!" cried Jack Monroe, "He's 
^een her?, sure you're born ! ^^QW \oo^ fl^Qf e in- 
fernal steel traps! He's sprung every one of them, and 
like as not pulled his freight to kingdom come." 
"And just look at his footprints!" said I, myself, my 
heart sinking within me and my spleen rising at my own 
infinite folly as a bear hunter. There in the soft dirt was 
an imprint as though some elephant or mastodon had 
passed by. We figured that it was eight inches across the 
pad. At last, here was our bear I Grizzly, perhaps, but 
anyhow a big one. And. big or little, grizzly or not, prob- 
ably a bear now vanished forever! 
"Oh, Jack, Jack !" said I, sitting down in very despair. 
"Why didn't you break off a branch and slug me yester- 
day when I passed by those beastly steel traps? Why** 
don't you kick me now? Why don't we both go jump in 
the river? Our bear has been here, and now he has 
gone, and will never, never, come back again 1 I surely ex- 
pect that I am the most infernal idiot that ever came west 
of the Missouri River." 
Jack calmly agreed with me in these details, and then 
after a while we began to question what was best to be 
done. Every steel trap had been sprimg, and we could not 
discover any evidence that the bear had even had a toe 
pinched by the traps. His big foot had apparently cov- 
ered up the entire No. 3 trap and it had probably snapped 
under hitn without hurting him in the least. He had not 
dug up the traps or thrtnvn them away, and Jack, after 
balancing the matter in his mind, finally expressed it as 
his opinion that the bear had not cared any more for 
those traps than if they had been mosquito bites. 
"He'll come back again, sure," said he, in his optimistic 
fashion. And bearing in mind the indefinite mental atti- 
tude of old John Monroe in regard to bears and steel 
traps. 1 at last tried to hope that perhaps this bear might 
be heard from again. 
"You see this grass and straw along the horse's side?"' 
said Jack. "Well, that means that this bear had put his 
brand on this horse. He says, 'This is my meat, and 
don't you bother it, for I'm coming back again after 
awhile.' Now the thing for us to do is to get away from 
here as soon as we can. and to take these blamed steel 
traps with us." 
With a gliastly attempt at humor, I suggested that may- 
be the bear would miss those traps if he came back, and so 
become suspicious of our intentions. We, however, pulled 
up all the traps, cut loose the horsehair wisps with which 
we had tied them to the carcass, and so. making as little 
hinnan sign about the place as we could, got to horse 
again and moved awaj-. We went back up the hill, it 
being now about 11 o'clock in the morning. Under Jack's 
instructions, we cut some little evergreen trees and made 
a sort of blind just at the crest of the hill, or, rather, at 
a point upon its .slope, where one could just see the bait 
in the little coulee below. The sun was now shining bright 
and warm, and as we were dressed in comfortable woolen, 
we suffered no inconvenience from the weather, and, in 
point of fact, we both lay down and went to sleep. We 
dozed along for hour after hour, after eating our lunch, 
taking things generally easy. Presently Collins came 
back from his quest and we explained to him the situa- 
tion. 
"Oh ! that bear won't come back before night " said Col- 
lins, "if he comes at all." In this we all agreed with hrm. 
We had no idea that, after feeding the night or morning 
just pas.sed, he would come in again very soon. Collins 
said he thought he would like to run down to Midvale and 
get the mail, and as there seemed no prospect of any fun 
with the bear, I agreed that he do this, and he rode on his 
way. expecting to meet us at camp after dark, unless we 
dcided to wait imtil late into the night at the bear bait. 
Left alone, Jack and I lay down and resumed our 
occupation of dozing in the sun. Once in a while one of 
tis would waken, sit up and peer through the evergreen 
branches at the bait below. In some .sort of fashion the 
afternoon wore on. T think I must have slept pretty nearly 
an hour the last time, and it was about half-past four in 
the evening when I was wakened with a sudden wrench 
at my arm which nearly took that member out of its 
socket. 
"Get up," said Jack, "The bear is there!" 
I sat up, rubbing my eyes, which were full of sticks. 
I could not see anything, and, for a moment could not 
realize where in the world I was. My sleep-confused 
brain could not tell what in the world it was that made 
Jack Monroe's eyes shine, and what made him so excited. 
Without saying anything further, he handed me the 
glasses and pushed me up close to the space between the 
evergreen boughs. I looked, and then I saw the cause 
of Jack's siidden interest in surrounding affairs. 
There, far down below us, more than a quarter of a 
mile away, but plainly visible even to the naked eye, and 
looming up in startling fashion in the field of the pow- 
erful glasses, was the 1)ear! He had come back after all. 
There he was, ripping away at the carcass of the horse. 
I could see the long, red hair rolling on his shoulders 
as he worked, his head down and his fore feet well in 
front of him. 
It was, then, not a grizzly. It was not a gray bear nor 
a silver-tip bear and. apparently, not a black bear. Its 
liide, which I could readily see was a splendid one^ was 
covered with a thick coat of deep, red-brown fur. 
"It's a cinnamon," I whispered to Jack. "A cinnamon 
sure, and maybe he'll give us a scrap." 
That was the one thing Jack and I had been longing 
for all along. We wanted a bear, a big bear, a big grizzly 
bear, and we wanted him to put up a fight. Jack said he 
didn't think it was a cinnamon. "It's a brown bear," he 
whispered; as we turned away. 
Now, whatever the scientists might have called this 
bear on the hoof, or whatever they would have called 
him after a closer inspection, I cannot say. They tell me 
that scientists now admit that there is a distinct species 
to be known as the cinnamon bear. Yet all Western hunt- 
ers know that, at least in the lower parts of the Rocky 
ranges, the grizzly bear may be what is known as the 
cinnamon: that is to say. a long-clawed bear, and may 
have a deep, red-colored hide. I had not yet had more 
than one look at the bear through the glasses, and the 
most I could see w.'fs his great, broad back, rolling and 
waving like a field of wheat in the wind. I could not tell 
whether or not he had long claws, but I hoped, as I 
think Jack did also, as we started down the hill on our 
long stalk, that this fellpw might have long claws and that 
lie inighf cjiarge «s ^n^ r&is^ alj \hf. trouble bl^m^^ 
please. By this tim.e we were irritated from ly- 
ing around and waiting so long without any spcrt, 
and now that we had gotten thus close to the bear, we 
v/anted him to do something to even up matters. 
"How's your nerve?" whispered Jack, as we started 
down the hill on the detour which was to bring us into 
the mouth of the little coulee. I answered by pulling 
np the rifle and taking a sight or two. I still had to rub 
my eyes to get the sticks out of them. 
Personally, I can answer that going up to a bear at 
a bait is a very simple matter. One does hot get very 
much excited, or, indeed, very much interested in the 
matter. He has been waiting around so .Jong that 
he has lost the capacity for great excitement and simply 
takes things as they come. 
Jack and I pade a careful stalk, trying our best to 
get to a certain little pine tree which we knew would 
be within seventy-five yards of the bait, Thence, if one 
were very careful, he might get up behind a bush, and, 
if everything went well, be then within fifty or sixty 
yards of his game. This first pine tree was just back of 
the ridge which crossed the mouth of the coulee at this 
place. We were never destined to reach even this first 
point of vantage. We were still on the upper ridge and 
just coming to the shoulder of the hill which blocked 
that side of the coulee, whet. I heard Jack whisper be- 
hind mc. excitedly: "There he is! Hurry up 1" 
.'\t the instant my head was down, as I was in the act 
of crawling along behind the ridge. I glanced up through 
the thin fringe of grass in front of mc, and there I saw 
the bear. He seemed an enormous sort of thing, as 
large as a meeting house, or larger. So' far from charg- 
ing us. or making any trouble for us, he was fifty yards 
away from the bait and walking directly across a big 
snowdrift on his way through the little opening in the 
wood, from which there sunk swiftly a deep coulee, once 
within which he would be out of our sight entirely. There 
remained perhaps ten yards of open space between the 
liear and the edge of the wood. He was walking quite 
rapidly, but not looking around. Perhaps some chance 
whipping around of the wind up the coulee had carried 
to him our scent, careful though our approach had been. 
Here, then, was the bear, a big bear, a red bear, a 
cinnamon bear, but in that swift flash of the eye which 
showed him, there came the sudden and disappointing 
knowledge of quarters rather sloping and not blocky 
and square, like those of the grizzly; of a head large and 
:-nassive enough it is true, yet showing the concave con- 
tour, not of Ephraim but of his humbler cousin, the short- 
toed citizen. 
Once, twice, and three times I tried to find siglU- 
through the waving grasses, never breathing once during 
that time and wondering intensely every second whether 
the bear was going to get into cover before I was able 
to find the proper sight. When you are shooting a rifle 
it is no use pulling the trigger until you know the sights 
are right, and I had sense enough to keep this fact promi- 
^lently in my consciousness. .'Vt last I got the tall fore- 
sight down, got the little ivory bead deep down into the 
rear sight. It caught a bunch of red fur, caught it some- 
where in the middle, leaving abundance of fur on every 
side of it. They tell you you must shoot your bear 
through the heart, through the brain, through the shoul- 
der. Any one who has ever killed a bear can tell you 
just how you ought to do it. Don't pay any attention 
to these people. They do not know what they are talk- 
ing about. The way to do is just to shoot him, and 
shoot him the best way you can under the circumstances. 
At any rate, that is just what I did with my bear. It was 
such a bother to get a good sight at all that I didn't 
trouble myself about shooting him through the brain, or 
through the shoulder, or anywhere else in partictdar. 
There was no time to shoot specified locations on that 
bear, It was just a case of shooting the bear itself and 
letting it go at that, with no time left to think it over. 
I felt the trigger loosen v/ith a smooth, even pull and 
naturally was sure that I had hit the bear. Yet, 
so far from his rolling over and bellowing, and so far 
from his charging at us open-mouthed and roaring at us 
withrageand pain, he simply gave a little, crouching squat 
and tremendous leap, whose swiftness and speed I could 
not have conceived possible in so large an animal. Then, 
on the instant, he disappeared under the cover of the tree-s 
and was gone over the brow of the coulee! I sprang up 
and fired a second shot, this time finding the long fore 
sight of the ..30-40 a great inconvenience. I had not time 
to catch aim and where this shot went I do not know, 
but I had no notion at the time that it had touched the 
bear. It was simply sent after him to show that there 
was no coldness. 
Novn', again my heart sank within me. I again reviled 
myself as the most unlucky person in all the world, and 
one deserving no atom of success. After fate had set 
pside the coyote-trapping perversity and had at length 
brought to me my bear, I had now missed him like a 
rank tenderfoot. Surely luck was against me. 
"You hit him," said Jack, to my intense and delighted 
surprise. 
"No, I didn't," said T. "If I had hit him with tliat 
bullet, it would have stopped him." 
'''Well, you hit him all right," said Jack, "anyhow; 
didn't you see him squat down, and didn't you see him 
throw "his head around toward where the bullet hit him? 
You needn't worry any, you landed on him all right." 
"Then, if I landed on him," said I, "he's our bear. I'll 
bet you l:hat much. So far as I cotild tell, I ought to have 
caught him about midship, and if that bullet ever went 
through his ribs, we'll come up with him sure." 
This much, as we hurried over the ridge down into 
the coulee and up to the snow bank, on which we could 
now see the vast footprints of the bear. There was no 
hair or blood vi.'uble — though later on we did find a little 
piece of hair, cut out by the bullet, and fallen on the 
snow. We hurriedly followed into the cover, not caring 
whether or not the bear was dangerous, but simply be- 
eau.se we had still lost our bear. Here and there we 
could see a deep footprint in the hard earth, as deep as 
a horse, wovild make in running. On one leaf Jack found 
a little, tiny drop of dark blood, not bigger than the head 
of a pin. "You hit him," said he again, and with still 
greater conviction in his tone. We trailed on and on. 
slowly, getting perhaps fifty yards in the direction lined 
out. All at onoe I looked down into the foot of the deep 
foul^f l??lc)w i|8, There, seen, ^itnl^ thro«fh a 4<^&^ 
