248 
WILD BEASTS AND THEIR WA YS 
CHAP. 
iron ; you could not discover the stick that would 
affect him for more than a few seconds, neither 
could you “belabour” the animal without cessation. 
The day that I forgot my spurs, we were riding 
along a valley; the left slope was wooded with 
spruce forest, the right was open grass. We 
suddenly observed a number of antelopes scouring 
down from the sky-line on our right, about 600 
yards distant; these had evidently been disturbed, 
and as there were no hunters within many miles of 
our position, we could not conceive the cause. 
Presently, three large bears appeared, cantering 
along at a great pace down the grass slope, making 
all haste to reach the forest on our left. As they 
would cross our path, we had every chance of 
intercepting them by a quick gallop straight ahead 
along the bottom of the valley. Buckskin took a 
different view of the position : he knew that I had 
no spurs, and in spite of every exertion on my part, 
I could not induce him to increase his pace from an 
ordinary walk. I jumped off, and ran as hard as I 
could go, but as we were about 10,500 feet above 
the sea-level, I was soon out of breath. The bears 
did not appear to suffer from short wind, as they 
reached the forest before I could cut off their 
retreat. My man unfortunately rode a mule upon 
that occasion, therefore we lost our chance. Mine 
was a really clever horse ; as a rule, I think a horse 
is next door to a lunatic; but Buckskin with spurs 
was as different from Buckskin without spurs as 
a steam-engine would be with or without fuel. 
