526 
FOREST AND STREAM 
April 27, 1912 
of a grown man makes a chum of his boy, that 
boy ain't a goin’ fur wrong when it comes his 
time to take the man’s place.” 
The next westbound train after Paystreak sent 
his letter brought a card from Pete’s ranch fifty 
miles up the canon; “Come tomorer,” he wrote. 
“Don't bring anything but your guns and pipes; 
Pve got every thing else.” So there we were 
the second day after in a two-seated mountain 
wagon drawn by a pair of stout mules. 
'We crossed Grey Eagle Creek, left Old 
Mohawk on the right, took the Johnsville road 
for a short distance, then turned and started more 
directly up the mountain, a gradual slope of 
open, primeval forest covered with immense yel¬ 
low and sugar pines, many of them six and seven 
feet through, generally free from underbrush, 
and save for winding about among the trees, we 
had no difficulty in ascending an easy grade of 
about 2,000 feet in the eight miles. 
“It’s a-goin’ to be a hard winter,” said Pete. 
“Bear an’ deer an’ mountain lion are cornin’ 
down earlier than usual. I lost a colt by a lion 
in my back pasture three nights ago an’ here 
’tis only the middle of October. Deer feed up 
as the snow melts in the spring an’ the lion an’ 
bear foller them.” 
“I saw some bear tracks in the wet sand in 
Grey Eagle Creek yesterday,” said Bud. “My, 
but they were big ones! Nearly a foot long.” 
“Did you foller ’em?” asked Pete. 
“No siree, not me; I took the back track. I 
was hunting quail. Somebody must have been 
after it, though, for there was a dog track along¬ 
side. Dog must have been pretty near as big 
as the bear, for the track was bigger than any 
dog track I ever saw. Looked like a man had 
pushed his fist down in the wet sand.’ 
“Huh, that wasn’t no dog track; ’twas a moun¬ 
tain lion’s. Remember, son, a mountain lion or 
any other kind of a cat always sheathes its claws 
when it’s travelin’. A dog don’t, an’ you c'n 
always see the marks of a dog’s toe nails in any¬ 
thing soft like snow, or mud, or wet sand. I 
reckon ’twas a bear with cubs followed by a lion 
who was watchin’ fur a chanst to grab one of 
the young. There’s a mortal feud between bears 
an’ mountain lions, an’ a grizzly will move a 
good-sized hill to get at a lion’s cubs.” 
On a steep bit of the slope we three men got 
out to lighten the load, leaving Bud on the front 
seat to drive. 'We were walking fifteen or 
twenty yards behind listening to Pete as he told 
how he enjoyed having a home, when there came 
a crash and a “whoof” from a thicket of laurel 
on our left, and out of a deep ravine charged a 
huge grizzly. The mules gave one whistling 
snort to tell how scared they were, and then 
started on a run with Bud tugging at the reins 
and yelling. The bear’s charge had placed him 
between us and the wagon containing our guns, 
and they were getting further away every sec¬ 
ond. I remember just before I treed that the 
mules, finding it heavy going up-hill, had swung 
about and started back with Bud still on the 
seat. In the first instant Pete had tried a “run 
around” to get at the wagon, but the team turn¬ 
ing in an opposite direction had left him further 
away and probably thirty or forty yards from 
Johnson and I. 
No bear can climb a tree that he cannot get 
his paws around, and owing to his great weight, 
a full-grown grizzly cannot climb. Near me was 
a dead sapling leaning against the limb of a big 
tree, and up that sapling I shinned for twenty 
feet and was soon astraddle of the branch. John¬ 
son climbed a little pine that thrust its top among 
the lower branches of a big cedar and was safe. 
Pete was near the edge of the ravine from 
which the bear charged, and there was no tree 
handy that he could climb. A big, sloping out¬ 
crop of rock that either he or the bear could 
have run up, and the size of a cottage, stood 
at the rim of the ravine, and at the down-hill 
edge grew a tall sugar pine without a limb for 
seventy-five feet. To climb that was out of the 
question. The bear for a moment was evidently 
puzzled as to its next move, its foes having dis¬ 
appeared so quickly. The wagon was far down 
the hill, two men had gone into trees, and the 
other he could not see, as he was on the opposite 
side of the outcrop. 
“Run for the wagon, Pete,” shouted Johnson, 
“and we’ll make a racket and keep him guessin’.” 
Pete caught the idea, but had barely started when 
the clumsy brute either heard or saw him and 
charged in his direction : 
“Look out,” yelled Johnson; “dodge ’round the 
rock on the downhill side.” Pete obeyed with 
greater speed than I thought was possible. Then 
followed the funniest and strangest “ring around 
a rosy” I ever saw. On level ground or up or 
down hill, for all its size and ungainly appear¬ 
ance, a grizzly bear can hurry a good horse for 
too or 200 yards, but his wind is not good for 
a long run at top speed. Along a steep hillside, 
unless the ground is soft enough to afford him 
a foothold, his weight pulls him down. 
On the downhill side the slope was steep, ptob- 
ably forty-five degrees, rock and covered with 
detritus from the outcrop above. Round and 
round they went; up or down and on the up hill 
side the bear gained, but along the shelly slope, 
a distance of seventy-five or eighty feet, Pete 
made up what he lost and gained a lead while 
the bear was slipping and sliding, unable to gain 
a toe hold where Pete’s hob-nailed boots held 
firmly. 
Honest, it was funny; I just had to laugh, 
although the situation was critical—for Pete. I 
knew his wind was good, and that he could keep 
ahead of the bear in that game, possibly until 
it retired, which it was quite apt to do in the 
course of a few hours; but in the meantime a 
mis-step, a fall, and the big brute would be on 
him. But Johnson—one might have heard him 
laugh and yell a mile away— 
“Round and round the liberty pole 
The monkey chased the weasel” 
he ^vould chant and then yell and yell. 
“Consarn ye,” shouted Pete in one of the 
occasional pauses that the bear took to get its 
bearings and look in the direction of the strange 
sounds, “if I ever lay my ban’s on a gun, the 
bear won’t be the first thing I take a shot 
at.” 
Suddenly Johnson changed his tune and 
shouted excitedly: “Yander comes Bud a-run- 
nin’ with the guns. Hi, there. Bud, stay back.” 
“Tell him to get behind that dead yeller pine 
an’ wait,” shouted Pete as he and the bear came 
around on another lap. 
“Shan’t I try a shot?” called Bud from behind 
the pine a hundred yards away. 
“No; take the guns out of the cases, chamber 
a ca’tridge in each an’ wait,” yelled his step¬ 
father. 
“He might get a bead on you an’ shoot as 
you come around, Pete, an’ at the rate you’re 
a-goin’, the bear will be there when the bullet 
hits,” suggested Johnson. “'Why don’t you run? 
You ain’t half tryin’. If I was in that game I’d 
speed up and overtake him an’ ride awhile. 
’Roun’ an’ ’roun’ the liber—ya-ee-e.” 
There came the crack of a breaking bough 
and a swish of brush as Paystreak dropped 
through the cedar twigs and top of the sapling, 
a fall of about fifteen feet, but he landed unhurt 
on the cushiony cedar spines that had been drop¬ 
ping for a century or more. Active as a cat, he- 
was hardly down before he was shinning up the 
sapling again. The noise attracted the bear’s 
attention, and on seeing Johnson, charged for 
him, red-mouthed. 
The instant Pete saw that, he humped his 
shoulders forward, let out a few links, and I 
never saw one hundred yards covered in so short 
a time. He reached Bud and the guns in time to 
see Paystreak swinging head down to some cedar 
twigs he had grasped, and trying to hook the 
limb above him in the crotch of his knees, while 
ten feet below him on his haunches, open- 
mouthed and paws spread, the grizzly waited for 
him to drop. 
“Rock-a-by baby in the tree top, 
When the wind blows the cradle will rock, 
M'hen the bough breaks, the cradle will fall, 
And down-” 
chanted Pete in great glee as he examined the 
magazine of the rifle. 
“Shoot, man, shoot! If you don’t shoot the 
bear, shoot me, for my hold’s a slippin’,” pleaded 
Paystreak, his voice coming nearer to showing 
fright than I had ever heard from him. 
Pete ran forward about fifty yards with Bud, 
carrying another rifle, stepping in his tracks. 
Pete threw up his rifle, fired at the butt of the 
grizzly’s ear, and as the monster swayed, there 
came another report from under Pete’s arm. 
Bud had dropped to one knee and fired for the 
spot behind the left fore shoulder. 
A moment or two later and we were around 
the bear speculating on its weight. It was fat 
as a hog, which had been a great handicap in 
its chase after Pete. 
Pete had no word of censure for Bud’s temer¬ 
ity in following him and taking a shot at the 
bear. On the contrary, he treated Bud as he 
would a man under similar circumstances, not 
even giving him a word of praise, but taking it 
as a matter of course. However, in dressing 
the huge beast he called Bud’s attention to the 
bullet wound in the fore shoulder: 
“Don’t do that, son, when shootin’ at a grizzly. 
Owin’ to its coat and big shoulder bone, its heart 
is the hardest place to hit unless you got exactly 
the right angle. The best spot is the butt of the 
ear or the eye. If he’s r’ared an’ cornin’ toward 
you open-mouthed, shoot up an’ into the back 
of his mouth. Otherwise he’ll take your hull 
magazine of ca’tridges an’ keep on a cornin’. 
But you helped, anyway; we’ll tan the hide an’ 
you c’n have it fer a rug alongside your bed. 
Where’s the mules?” 
“Nearly a mile down the hill. They run be¬ 
tween two big trees and wedged the wagon so 
they can’t get out.” 
Later Pete chuckled as he said to us on the 
side: “Ain’t he the nervy little feller? Knowed 
jest what to do. an’ was right alongside his dad 
with a rifle when the finish come.” 
