v 18, 1907-] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
77' 
if Forbes had not seized him by the arm 
dragged him up. The grizzly was actually 
n ten feet of him. I fired twice full at the 
il’s head. The beast ro. 3 e and lunged as if 
ip on the rock. Forbes then fired, and for- 
ely his bullet entered the creature’s eye. 
lied over against the rock and was dead in 
y minutes. Powell lay panting over the 
of the rock. “I had no time to spare, had 
ie wheezed out. We agreed with him. In 
1 seconds more the bear would have had him. 
e rest of the party soon began to make their 
1 trance, emerging from various places of 
e. A short distance down the slope of the 
1 I could see Reed struggling to dislodge 
1 ;lf from the topmost boughs of a small pine 
1 e he had sought safety. The bear had scat- 
1 the men in all directions. They had fired 
shots at him from a distance of about 
f -five yards, but though all the bullets had 
i tone had disabled the animal sufficiently to 
i le his locomotion. This bear was slightly 
seven feet long, and must have weighed 
y half a ton. It was our first grizzly. We 
1 three others during the two weeks that we 
1 ined encamped by the little lake. Two of 
1, were killed without much difficulty, but the 
proved a tough customer. 
■ the morning of this last bear fight Porter 
I Forbes had gone down the river in one of 
if anoes to try the fishing. After a time the 
•l >f us set off for a long, grassy valley which 
, etween parallel ranges of mountains, seven 
ght miles to the northwest of our camp, 
illuvial land of this valley was covered with 
curiant growth of herbage, and was lined 
ich side further up the hill with thickets 
1 ders, willows and scattered pines. In the 
ij - were several spring-heads and little brooks, 
ad selected the place as a good one for elk 
ghorns coming down to water, and this 
ing we saw from the rocks above a herd 
( e blacktails browsing near a brook. 
I Tending from the crags into the thickets 
•gan cautiously to work our way out toward 
;ame. Half an hour of tedious crawling 
rocks and through bushes and brambles 
ht us within rifle range, when, to our 
; in, we saw the whole herd go bounding 
le mountain opposite. It was useless to 
/, but Reed, while coming down the side 
2 mountain behind us, had noticed an odd 
i beneath an overhanging rock which he 
ht might be the entrance to a den of some 
Having nothing better in prospect he went 
1 up the side of the mountain to examine it, 
‘ aw pretty plainly that it was the lair of 
animal. The crag overhanging the hole 
s high as the eaves of a two-story house, 
t was split into crevices and seams. Several 
1 and old stubs stood near the crag, and 
'( a fissure a large wreath of a vine resemb- 
ll lematis grew out and overhung the mouth 
e cave, shutting out the light. It was a 
1 , darksome hole, leading down a good way 
th the ground. 
ew feet from the mouth of the cavern lay 
y singular round boulder, as large as a 
I basket, which looked as if it had been 
j about for a plaything; and such, indeed, 
■ k it was—a playing for bears. Trundling 
boulder along to the mouth of the cave 
[ sent it rolling down. We heard it go 
’! n g over the stones for thirty or forty feet, 
’)' back a hollow sound, with which there 
j uddenly blended an ugly bass note. 
ar that!” Powell exclaimed. “There’s a 
*i n there!” 
f| all took to our heels, but not before we 
| caught a glimpse of a grizzly emerging 
under the vines, snorting with fury. The 
j /as, we were all taken aback by the sud- 
l’ s °f the animal’s charge. I ran along the 
j ‘nd climbed to the top of it, by means of 
i: onerous cracks and fissures in the rocks, 
found Ike, the guide, up there ahead of 
•! Pricing hastily about I saw Reed on top 
1 arge pine stump, five or six rods further 
| the slope. The stub, though thick, was 
• 'ght or ten feet high and apparently hol- 
' or Reed was perched on its top with his 
1 angmg down inside it. A little to the 
[ t owell was laboriously trying to climb a 
tall, slim pine, with the bear close by, as if dis¬ 
posed to drag him down. 
Ike and I at once fired on the common enemy. 
Reed had been forced to drop his rifle at the 
foot of the stub, but he had a large revolver in 
his belt with which he, too, began shooting, very 
much in earnest. With our first shots the bear 
left Powell’s tree and made a charge back to¬ 
ward the crag where the guide and I were posted. 
We had fired twice and wounded him as he came 
up, and this seemed only to add to his rage. He 
came sturdily forward and leaped up, catching 
his claws in the chinks of the ledges; but the 
top was too high and he fell back. Before we 
could fire again a ball from Reed’s navy pistol 
pricked the creature so sharply that he wheeled 
and charged for the stub upon which the marks¬ 
man sat. 
This grizzly certainly possessed extraordinary 
agility for an animal of his bulk. He rushed to 
and fro and dodged about with such rapidity 
that it was exceedingly difficult to get aim, even 
for such short range shooting. For a moment 
or two the beast went around the stub, making 
feints of rearing up, Reed meantime discharg¬ 
ing shot after shot. Ike and I too were firing 
as fast as we could load. 
Powell, like Reed, had dropped his rifle at 
the foot of the pine which he had climbed, and 
could do nothing save look on and shout ad¬ 
vice. “Hit him! Shoot him! Now take him 
in the flank!” he shouted to us. But the bear 
suddenly shifted to the lower side of the stub, 
and raising himself to his fullest stretch, clasped 
the hollow stump in his immense paws and began 
to sway and tug at it, trying to break the stub 
down! 
Reed wriggled about uneasily on his perch and 
cast anxious glances around, for the stump was 
violently shaken. “Shoot! Shoot, man! Shoot 
him in the head!” we shouted to him. We dared 
not fire; bear and man were too close together. 
Reed steadied himself, and reaching down, fired 
his last cartridge, but the grizzly only roared 
and tugged the harder. 
Suddenly the stub cracked loudly, and began 
to bend to one side. Feeling it give way Reed 
uttered a cry of dismay and tried to gather up 
his leg? and jump off; but he lost his balance 
instead and slid down inside like a ramrod into 
a gun .barrel. The stub came violently to the 
ground and at once began to roll down the steep 
slope, gaining headway with every revolution. 
Horrified at the spectacle the guide jumped 
down the crag to go to the rescue. I followed 
his example, for we knew that when the hollow 
log stopped rolling it would not take the bear 
long to drag our friend out of it. Bounding over 
stones in a manner which must have jostled poor 
Reed unmercifully, the log bumped down the 
slope until it was stopped, with a violent shock, 
by the trunk of a pine. Seeing us pursuing him 
the grizzly faced about and braced himself for 
a charge up the hill to meet us a good half way. 
He still seemed full of resolution and gave a 
roar that was far from reassuring. We took as 
good aim as we could in such haste, and both 
fired. Very luckily for us one of the bullets 
struck the animal’s throat, cutting one of the 
large veins, and two well directed bullets killed 
him. 
Reed was pulled out of the hollow log in a 
rather forlorn condition. He had received a 
dreadful shaking up. though his actual injuries 
were not serious. On examination we discovered 
that eleven balls had lodged in various parts of 
the bear’s body. The pine stub had been broken 
short off at the ground. The sound part of the 
wood was not very thick, but I have no doubt 
at all in saying that it would have required the 
strength of a yoke of oxen, well applied, to break 
that stub down as the bear broke it. 
Frank H. Sweet. 
ROUGHING IT 
soon grows tiresome unless the food is good. 
Good milk is one item indispensable to a cheer¬ 
ful camp, and Borden’s solves the problem. 
Eagle Brand Condensed Milk and Peerless Brand 
Evaporated Milk keep indefinitely, anywhere, and 
fill every milk or cream requirement.— Adv. 
A Tennessee Outing.—III. 
After our experience with the elusive covey 
of quail came the blue day—not the kind 
when things go wrong and the day lacks just 
a little of perfection; when a few shots are 
missed to be told of en passant, but a genuine 
cerulean blue day, when everything capable of 
motion goes on the bias; when you get so ab¬ 
solutely saturated with self-disgust that you 
feel a pitying contempt for a man who would 
associate with or even speak to you; when the 
dog you would have shed your blood for yes¬ 
terday, suddenly develops into a worthless, 
unlovely brute, and the gun you had felt your¬ 
self unworthy of proves as utterly ineffective 
as a rusty old breech-burnt fusee; when shots 
the missing of which by a veritable tyro would 
cause you to grow hysterical with mirth, be¬ 
come absolute impossibilities to your trained 
and erstwhile obedient eye and hand. As 
Wimble says, “Wah! It’s ice down your back, 
big chunks and hard froze.” 
I never was what might be called an ex¬ 
traordinary shot; never have had to use vio¬ 
lence in resisting efforts to put my name in 
the champion class, and am wholly unlike 
some of my ingenuous acquaintances who re¬ 
turn from hunts and assure me, in all serious¬ 
ness, that “they could not miss them.” If I 
was in the class with them, I would take the 
obliquity cure; if in the class they would have 
me believe them in, I would leave off shooting. 
With the element of uncertainty gone, there 
would be no more sport in hunting. So, by 
devious, indifferent and indefinite reasoning, 
I am working along in the direction of that 
blue day aforesaid, for the element of un¬ 
certainty was wholly lacking. I missed every¬ 
thing- , , , . 
A more perfect day never dawned—clear, 
cold and still, with the frost-studded fields a 
sea of diamonds. Five minutes out in the 
first bit of stubble we found the birds scattered 
over considerable ground, feeding. The little 
dog was feeling a bit too good, and got in 
among them before we knew it. I he birds 
flushed all round her, and made for a thicket 
in the distance, with the dog a very close 
second. It looked about neck and neck with 
the covey and Lady when they disappeared 
among the trees, and I ought at least to have 
felt some pride in her speed and bottom. 
“Surely must think she is Bob, said my 
friend when, in spite of my commands and 
entreaties, she ran it out. 
What I said is of no consequence. The poor 
little abjectly miserable apology for a dog 
that came creeping back to us in place of my 
graceful, spirited thoroughbred Lady, was 
enough to move the heart of a red Indian and 
cause him to show pity; but I am no weakling. 
What it is that a man can suffer with, that 
makes him, for the time being, the most 
egregious bounder, I had an acute attack of 
that morning. 
I would like to go rout the dear, lovable 
little dog out of her warm bed right now and 
tell her how sorry I am for the thrashing I 
gave her that beautiful morning if she could 
only understand my explanation, for I do not 
believe she sinned willfully; it was just a bit 
of carelessness and animal spirits. 
Subdued and penitent, she went back with 
us, and soon began to get down to work on 
the scattered birds. The first was a single 
straightaway—my bird. I missed it. Ten steps 
further on/Lady found me a pair. They lay 
well and gave me plenty of time to get the 
most favorable position. Charlie refused to 
come up, insisting upon my taking the shot. 
They offered fair shots. I missed them. Lady 
next found my unselfish friend a bird—a big, 
strong-flying fellow, that flushed before he got 
within twenty yards of it, and tried boring 
