64 
SEEKING ROMANTIC ADVENTURES. 
Each ranchman's cattle are branded with a distinctive mark burned 
into the animars hide with a red hot iron when the beasts are young. 
Col. Roosevelt owns two brands for his cattle and bronchos—the 
''Elkhorn" and the “Maltese Cross"—to correspond with the names 
of his two ranches. The Elkhorn ranch is located thirty miles down 
the river from Medora. It was originall}^ intended to be the home 
ranch, and the buildings are much more elaborate and expensive 
than the Maltese Cross. But the two have been consolidated and 
administrated from the latter, it being a superior location. 
The whole region swarmed with game of all sorts, more espec¬ 
ially elk, deer and mountain sheep. Col. Roosevelt learned much 
and enjoyed more during his first year (1884) of cowboy life on 
the plains. The next summer he came again and hunted all sorts of 
big game. He tells the following graphic story of an interview he 
had with a grizzly in Idaho. 
CHARGED BY A GRIZZLY BEAR. 
The bear was wounded and charged with manifest anger. “I 
held true, aiming behind the shoulder and my bullet shattered the 
point or lower end of his heart, taking out a big nick. Instantly 
the great bear turned with a harsh roar of fury and challenge, 
blowing the blood foam from his mouth, so that I saw the gleam 
of his white fangs; and then he charged straight at me, crashing 
and bounding through the laurel bushes, so that it was hard to aim. 
I waited until he came to a fallen tree, raking him as he topped it 
with a ball, which entered his chest and went through the cavity 
of his body; but he neither swerved nor flinched and at the moment 
I did not know that I had struck him. 
He came steadily on, and in another second was almost upon 
me. I fired for his forehead, but my bullet went low, entering his 
open mouth, smashing his lower jaw and going into the neck. I 
leaped to one side almost as I pulled the trigger; and through the 
hanging smoke the first thing I saw was his paw, as he made a 
vicious side blow at me. 
“The rush of his charge carried him past. As he struck he 
lurched forward, leaving a pool of bright blood where his muzzle hit 
