Hunting the grisly and other sketches

COTRI3HT 1902 BY JAMES SUYDAM

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HUNTING THE GRISLY
AND OTHER SKETCHES

BY

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

PUBLISHED WITH THE PERMISSION OF THE
AUTHOR THUOUGH SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
WITH THE CENTURY CO., MESSRS. CHARLES

SCRIBNER'S SONS, AND G. p. PUTNAM'S SONS

NEW YORK
THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS COMPANY

M C M X

COPYRIGHT 1893
Bv G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

This edition is published under arrangement with
G. P. Putnam's Sons, of New York and London,

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

THE BISON OR AMERICAN BUFFALO

Extermination of the Bison — My Brother and Cousin
Take a Hunting Trip in Texas — Hardships — Hunting
on the Brazos — Many Buffalo Slain — Following Four
Bulls — A Stampede — Splitting the Herd — Occasional
Charges — A Comanche War Party — Great Herds on
the Arkansas — Adventure of Clarence King — The
Bison of the Mountains — At the Vanishing Point — A
Hunt for Mountain Bison — A Trail Discovered — Skil
ful Tracking— A Band of Six— Death of the Bull— A
Camp in the Canyon 3

CHAPTER II

THE BLACK BEAR

Habits of the Black Bear— Holds His Own Well in the
Land — The Old Hunters — Hunting Bear with Dogs —
General Hampton's Hunting — Black Bear at Bay — A
Bear Catching Mice and Chipmunks — Occasional Raids
on the Farmyard— Their Weight— Those I Have
Killed 37

CHAPTER III

OLD EPHRAIM, THE GRISLY BEAR

The King of American Game — Varieties of the Grisly —
Worthlessness of Old Hunters' Opinions — Grisly Con
trasted with Black Bear — Size — Habits in Old Times
— Habits Nowadays — Hibernating — Cattle Killing —

248026

Contents

Horse Killing — Range Cow Repels Bear — Bear Kills
Sheep and Hogs — Occasional Raids on Game — Killing
Bison, Elk, and Moose — Eats Carrion — Old Hes Some
times Kill Cubs — Usually Eats Roots and Vegetables
— Fondness for Berries — Its Foes — Den — Fond of Wal
lowing — Shes and Cubs — Trapping Bears — Hunting
Them with Dogs — Ordinarily Killed with Rifle ... 50

CHAPTER IV

HUNTING THE GRISLY

Camp in the Mountains — After the First Snow — Trailing
and Stalking a Big Bear — His Death — Lying in Camp
— Stalking and Shooting a Bear at a Moose Carcass —
Lying in Wait for a Bear by a Dead Elk — He Comes
Late in the Evening — Is Killed — A Successful Hunt
ing Trip — A Quarrel — I Start Home Alone — Get Lost
on Second Day — Shot at a Grisly — His Resolute
Charge and Death — Danger in Hunting the Grisly —
Exaggerated, but Real — Rogers Charged — Difference
in Ferocity in Different Bears — Dr. Merrill's Queer
Experience — Tazewell Woody 's Adventures — Vari
ous Ways in which Bears Attack — Examples — Men
Maimed and Slain — Instances — Mr. Whitney's Ex
perience — A Bear Killed on the Round-up — Ferocity
of Old-time Bears — Occasional Unprovoked Attacks
— A French Trapper Attacked — Cowboys and Bears
— Killing Them with a Revolver — Feat of General
Jackson .92

CHAPTER V

THE COUGAR

Difficulty of Killing the Cougar — My Own Failures — Kill
One in the Mountains — Hunting the Cougar with
Hounds — Experience of General Wade Hampton and
Col. Cecil Clay— "Hold on, Penny"— What the Cou
gar Preys On — Its Haunts — Its Calls — Rarely Turns
on Man — Occasionally Dangerous — Instances . . .145

Contents

CHAPTER VI

A PECCARY HUNT ON THE NUECES

' Trip in Southern Texas — A Ranch on the Frio — Rop
ing Cattle — Extermination of the Peccary — Odd Habits
— Occasionally Attacks Unprovoked — We Drive South
to the Nueces — Flower Prairies — Semi-tropical Land
scape — Hunting on Horseback — Half-blood Hounds —
Find a Small Band of Peccaries— Kill Two— How They
Act When at Bay— Their Occasional Freaks . . . .162

CHAPTER VII

HUNTING WITH HOUNDS

31d-time Hunters Rarely Used Dogs— The Packs of the
Southern Planters— Coursing in the West — Hunting
with Greyhounds Near My Ranch — Jack-rabbits,
Foxes, Coyotes, Antelopes, and Deer — An Original
Sportsman of the Prairies — Colonel Williams' Grey
hounds — Riding on the Plains — Cross-country Riding
— Fox-hunting at Geneseo — A Day with Mr. Wads-
worth's Hounds — The Meadowbrook Drag Hounds
— High Jumping — A Meet at Sagamore Hill — Fox
hunting and Fetichism — Prejudices of Sportsmen,
Foreign and Native — Different Styles of Riding . .179

CHAPTER VIII

WOLVES AND WOLF-HOUNDS

The Wolf — Contrasted with Coyote — Variations in Color
— Former Abundance — The Riddle of Its Extermina
tion — Inexplicable Differences in Habits Between
Closely Related Species — Size of Wolf — Animals
Upon Which It Preys— Attacking Cattle; Horses;
Other Animals; Foxes, Dogs, and Even Coyotes —
Runs Down Deer and Antelope— Coyotes Catch Jack-
rabbits— Wolves Around Camp— A Wolf Shot— Wolf-
Hunting with Hounds— An Overmatch for Most Dogs
—Decimating a Pack— Coursing Wolves with Grey-
VOL. in. i

Contents

hounds — A Hunt in the Foot-hills — Rousing the
Wolves— The Chase— The Worry— Death of Both
Wolves— Wolf Hounds Near Fort Benton— Other
Packs— The Sun River Hounds— Their Notable
Feats — Colonel Williams' Hounds 213

CHAPTER IX

IN COWBOY LAND

Development of Archaic Types of Character— Cowboys
and Hunters — Rough Virtues and Faults — Incidents
— Hunting a Horse-thief — Tale of the Ending of a
Desperado— Light-hearted Way of Regarding "Broke
Horses" — Hardness of the Life- -Deaths from Many
Causes— Fight of Indians with Trappers— The Slay
ing of the Medicine Chief Sword-Bearer — Mad Feat
and Death of Two Cheyenne Braves ...... 248

HUNTING THE GRISLY
CHAPTER I

THE BISON OR AMERICAN BUFFALO

A A 7 HEN we became a nation, in 1776, the
* * buffaloes, the first animals to vanish
when the wilderness is settled, roved to the
crests of the mountains which mark the west
ern boundaries of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and
the Carolinas. They were plentiful in what
are now the States of Ohio, Kentucky, and
Tennessee. But by the beginning of the pres
ent century they had been driven beyond the
Mississippi ; and for the next eighty years they
formed one of the most distinctive and char
acteristic features of existence on the great
plains. Their numbers were countless — in
credible. In vast herds of hundreds of thou
sands of individuals, they roamed from the
Saskatchewan to the Rio Grande and west
ward to the Rocky Mountains. They fur
nished all the means of livelihood to the tribes
of Horse Indians, and to the curious popu-

(3)

4 Hunting the Grisly

lation of French Metis, or Half-breeds, on the
Red River, as well as to those dauntless and
archetypical wanderers, the white hunters and
trappers. Their numbers slowly diminished,
but the decrease was very gradual until after
the Civil War. They were not destroyed by
the settlers, but by the railways and the skin
hunters.

After the ending of the Civil War, the work
of constructing trans-continental railway lines
was pushed forward with the utmost vigor.
These supplied cheap and indispensable, but
hitherto wholly lacking, means of transporta
tion to the hunters; and at the same time the
demand for buffalo robes and hides became
very great, while the enormous numbers of
the beasts, and the comparative ease with
which they were slaughtered, attracted
throngs of adventurers. The result was such
a slaughter of big game as the world had never
before seen; never before were so many large
animals of one species destroyed in so short a
time. Several million buffaloes were slain.
In fifteen years from the time the destruction
fairly began the great herds were extermi
nated. In all probability there are not now,
all told, five hundred head of wild buffaloes
on the American continent; and no herd of

The Bison or American Buffalo 5

a hundred individuals has been in existence
since 1884.

The first great break followed the building
of the Union Pacific Railway. All the buffa
loes of the middle region were then destroyed,
and the others were split into two vast sets of
herds, the northern and the southern. The
latter were destroyed first, about 1878 ; the for
mer not until 1883. My own chief experience
with buffaloes was obtained in the latter year,
among small bands and scattered individuals,
near my ranch on the Little Missouri; I have
related it elsewhere. But two of my kinsmen
were more fortunate and took part in the chase
of these lordly beasts when the herds still
darkened the prairie as far as the eye could
see.

During the first two months of 1877, my
brother Elliott, then a lad not seventeen years
old, made a buffalo-hunt toward the edge of
the Staked Plains in northern Texas. He was
thus in'at the death of the southern herds; for
all, save a few scattering bands, were de
stroyed within two years of this time. He was
with my cousin, John Roosevelt, and they went
out on the range with six other adventurers.
It was a party of just such young men as fre
quently drift to the frontier. All were short

6 Hunting the Grisly

of cash, and all were hardy, vigorous fellows,
eager for excitement and adventure. My
brother was much the youngest of the party,
and the least experienced; but he was well-
grown, strong and healthy, and very fond of
boxing, wrestling, running, riding, and shoot
ing; moreover, he had served an apprentice
ship in hunting deer and turkeys. Their mess-
kit, ammunition, bedding, and provisions
were carried in two prairie-wagons, each
drawn by four horses. In addition to the
teams they had six saddle-animals — all of
them shaggy, unkempt mustangs. Three or
four dogs, setters and half-bred greyhounds,
trotted along behind the wagons. Each man
took his turn for two days as teamster and
cook; and there were always two with the
wagons, or camp, as the case might be, while
the other six were off hunting, usually in
couples. The expedition was undertaken
partly for sport and partly with the hope of
profit; for, after purchasing the horses and
wagons, none of the party had any money left,
and they were forced to rely upon selling skins
and hides, and when near the forts, meat.

They started on January 2d, and shaped
their course for the head-waters of the Salt
Fork of the Brazos, the centre of abundance

The Bison or American Buffalo 7

for the great buffalo herds. During the first
few days they were in the outskirts of the set
tled country, and shot only small game — quail
and prairie fowl ; then they began to kill tur
key, deer, and antelope. These they swapped
for flour and feed at the ranches or squalid,
straggling frontier towns. On several occa
sions the hunters were lost, spending the night
out in the open, or sleeping at a ranch, if
one was found. Both towns and ranches
were filled with rough customers; all of my
brother's companions were muscular, hot
headed fellows; and as a consequence they
were involved in several savage free fights, in
which, fortunately, nobody was seriously hurt,
My brother kept a very brief diary, the entries
being fairly startling from their conciseness.
A number of times the mention of their ar
rival, either at a halting-place, a little village,
or a rival buffalo-camp, is followed by the
laconic ramark, "big fight," or "big row";
but once they evidently concluded discretion
to be the better part of valor, the entry for
January 2Oth being, "On the road — passed
through Belknap — too lively, so kept on to the
Brazos — very late." The buffalo-camps in
particular were very jealous of one another,
each party regarding itself as having exclu-

8 Hunting the Grisly

sive right to the range it was the first to find ;
and on several occasions this feeling came near
involving my brother and his companions in
serious trouble.

While slowly 'driving the heavy wagons to
the hunting grounds they suffered the usual
hardships of plains travel. The weather, as
in most Texas winters, alternated between the
extremes of heat and cold. There had been
little rain; in consequence water was scarce.
Twice they were forced to cross wild, barren
wastes, where the pools had dried up, and
they suffered terribly from thirst. On the
first occasion the horses were in good condi
tion, and they traveled steadily, with only oc
casional short halts, for over thirty-six hours,
by which time they were across the waterless
country. The journal reads: "January 2710.
— Big hunt — no water, and we left QuiniVs
blockhouse this morning 3 A.M. — on the go
all night — hot. January 28. — No water — hot
• — at seven we struck water, and by eight Stink
ing Creek — grand 'hurrah.' ' On the second
occasion, the horses were weak and traveled
slowly, so the party went forty-eight hours
without drinking. "February igth.— Pulled
on twenty-one miles — trail bad — freezing
night, no water, and wolves after our fresh

The Bison or American Buffalo 9

meat. 20. — Made nineteen miles over prairie ;
again only mud, no water, freezing hard-
frightful thirst. 2 1 St. — Thirty miles to Clear
Fork, fresh water." These entries were hur
riedly jotted down at the time, by a boy who
deemed it unmanly to make any especial note
of hardship or suffering; but every plainsman
will understand the real agony implied in
working hard for two nights, one day, and
portions of two others, without water, even in
cool weather. During the last few miles the
staggering horses were only just able to drag
the lightly loaded wagon — for they had but
one with them at the time— while the men
plodded along in sullen silence, their mouths
so parched that they could hardly utter a
word. My own hunting and ranching were
done in the North where there is more water;
so I have never had a similar experience.
Once I took a team in thirty-six hours across
a country where there was no water; but by
good luck it rained heavily in the night, so
that the horses had plenty of wet grass, and I
caught the rain in my slicker, and so had
enough water for myself. Personally, I have
but once been as long as twenty-six hours with
out water.

The party pitched their permanent camp

io Hunting the Grisly

in a canyon of the Brazos known as Canyon
Blanco. The last few days of their journey
they traveled beside the river through a ver
itable hunter's paradise. The drought had
forced all the animals to come to the larger
water-courses, and the country was literally
swarming with game. Every day, and all
day long, the wagons traveled through the
herds of antelopes that grazed on every side,
while, whenever they approached the canyon
brink, bands of deer started from the timber
that fringed the river's course; often, even
the deer wandered out on the prairie with the
antelope. Nor was the game shy ; for the hunt
ers, both red and white, followed only the
buffaloes, until the huge, shaggy herds were
destroyed, and the smaller beasts were in con
sequence but little molested.

Once my brother shot five antelopes from
a single stand, when the party were short of
fresh venison; he was out of sight and to
leeward, and the antelopes seemed confused
rather than alarmed at the rifle-reports and the
fall of their companions. As was to be ex
pected where game was so plenty, wolves and
coyotes also abounded. At night they sur
rounded the camp, wailing and howling in a
kind of shrieking chorus throughout the hours

The Bison or American Buffalo n

of darkness; one night they came up so close
that the frightened horses had to be hobbled
and guarded. On another occasion a large
wolf actually crept into camp, where he was
seized by the dogs, and the yelling, writhing
knot of combatants rolled over one of the
sleepers; finally, the long-toothed prowler
managed to shake himself loose, and vanished
in the gloom. One evening they were almost
as much startled by a visit of a different kind.
They were just finishing supper when an In
dian stalked suddenly and silently out of the
surrounding darkness, squatted down in the
circle of firelight, remarked gravely, "Me
Tonk," and began helping himself from the
stew. He belonged to the friendly tribe of
Tonkaways, so his hosts speedily recovered
their equanimity; as for him, he had never
lost his, and he sat eating by the fire until
there was literally nothing left to eat. The
panic caused by his appearance was natural;
for at that time the Comanches were a scourge
to the buffalo-hunters, ambushing them and
raiding their camps; and several bloody fights
had taken place.

Their camp had been pitched near a deep
pool or water-hole. On both sides the bluffs
rose like walls, and where they had crumbled

12 Hunting the Grisly

and lost their sheerness, the vast buffalo herds,
passing and repassing for countless genera
tions, had worn furrowed trails so deep that
the backs of the beasts were but little above
the surrounding soil. In the bottom, and in
places along the crests of the cliffs that
hemmed in the canyon-like valley, there were
groves of tangled trees, tenanted by great
flocks of wild turkeys. Once my brother
made two really remarkable shots at a pair
of these great birds. It was at dusk, and they
were flying directly overhead from one cliff
to the other. He had in his hand a thirty-
eight calibre Ballard rifle, and, as the gob
blers winged their way heavily by, he brought
both down with two successive bullets. This
was of course mainly a piece of mere luck; but
it meant good shooting, too. The Ballard
was a very accurate, handy little weapon; it
belonged to me, and was the first rifle I ever
owned or used. With it I had once killed
a deer, the only specimen of large game I had
then shot; and I presented the rifle to my
brother when he wrent to Texas. In our happy
ignorance we deemed it quite good enough
for buffalo or anything else; but out on the
plains my brother soon found himself forced
to procure a heavier and more deadly weapon.

The Bison or American Buffalo 13

When camp was pitched the horses were
turned loose to graze and refresh themselves
after their trying journey, during which they
had lost flesh wofully. They were watched
and tended by the two men who were always
left in camp, and, save on rare occasions, were
only used to haul in the buffalo hides. The
camp-guards for the time being acted as cooks;
and, though coffee and flour both ran short
and finally gave out, fresh meat of every kind
was abundant. The camp was never without
buffalo-beef, deer, and antelope venison, wild
turkeys, prairie-chickens, quails, ducks, and
rabbits. The birds were simply "potted," as
occasion required; when the quarry was deer
or antelope, the hunters took the dogs with
them to run down the wounded animals. But
almost the entire attention of the hunters was
given to the buffalo. After an evening spent
in lounging round the camp-fire and a sound
night's sleep, wrapped in robes and blankets,
they would get up before daybreak, snatch a
hurried breakfast, and start off in couples
through the chilly dawn. The great beasts
were very plentiful; in the first day's hunt
twenty were slain; but the herds were restless
and ever on the move. Sometimes they would
be seen right by the camp, and again it would

14 Hunting the Grisly

need an all-day's tramp to find them. There
was no difficulty in spying them— the chief
trouble with forest game; for on the prairie
a buffalo makes no effort to hide and its black,
shaggy bulk looms up as far as the eye can
see. Sometimes they were found in small
parties of three or four individuals, sometimes
in bands of about two hundred, and again in
great herds of many thousands; and solitary
old bulls, expelled from the herds, were com
mon. If on broken land, among hills and ra
vines, there was not much difficulty in ap
proaching from the leeward ; for, though the
sense of smell in the buffalo is very acute, they
do not see well at a distance through their
overhanging frontlets of coarse and matted
hair. If, as was generally the case, they were
out on the open, rolling prairie, the stalking
was far more difficult. Every hollow, every
earth hummock and sagebush had to be used
as cover. The hunter wriggled through the
grass flat on his face, pushing himself along
for perhaps a quarter of a mile by his toes
and fingers, heedless of the spiny cactus.
When near enough to the huge, unconscious
quarry the hunter began firing, still keeping
himself carefully concealed. If the smoke
was blown away by the wind, and if the buf-

The Bison or American Buffalo 15

faloes caught no glimpse of the assailant, they
would often stand motionless and stupid until
many of their number had been slain, the
hunter being careful not to fire too high, aim
ing just behind the shoulder, about a third
of the way up the body, that his bullet might
go through the lungs. Sometimes, even after
they saw the man, they would act as if con
fused and panic-struck, huddling together and
staring at the smoke puffs ; but generally they
were off at a lumbering gallop as soon as they
had an idea of the point of danger. When
once started, they ran for many miles before
halting, and their pursuit on foot was ex
tremely laborious.

One morning my cousin and brother had
been left in camp as guards. They were sit
ting idly warming themselves in the first sun
beams, when their attention was sharply drawn
to four buffaloes that were coming to the pool
to drink. The beasts came down a game trail,
a deep rut in the bluff, fronting where they
were sitting, and they did not dare to stir for
fear of being discovered. The buffaloes
walked into the pool, and after drinking their
fill, stood for some time with the water run
ning out of their mouths, idly lashing their
sides with their short tails, enjoying the bright

1 6 Hunting the Grisly

warmth of the early sunshine ; then, with much
splashing and the gurgling of soft mud, they
left the pool and clambered up the bluff with
unwieldy agility. As soon as they turned,
my brother and cousin ran for their rifles,
but before they got back the buffaloes had
crossed the bluff crest. Climbing after them,
the two hunters found, when they reached the
summit, that their game, instead of halting,
had struck straight off across the prairie at
a slow lope, doubtless intending to rejoin the
herd they had left. After a moment's consul
tation the men went in pursuit, excitement
overcoming their knowledge that they ought
not, by rights, to leave camp. They struck a
steady trot, following the animals by sight
until they passed over a knoll, and then trail
ing them. Where the grass was long, as it
was for the first four or five miles, this was a
work of no difficulty, and they did not break
their gait, only glancing now and then at the
trail. As the sun rose and the day became
warm, their breathing grew quicker; and the
sweat rolled off their faces as they ran across
the rough prairie sward, up and down the
long inclines, now and then shifting their
heavy rifles from one shoulder to the other.
But they were in good training, and they did

The Bison or American Buffalo 17

not have to halt. At last they reached stretches
of bare ground, sun-baked and grassless, where
the trail grew dim; and here they had to go
very slowly, carefully examining the faint
dents and marks made in the soil by the heavy
hoofs, and unraveling the trail from the mass
of old footmarks. It was tedious work, but it
enabled them to completely recover their
breath by the time that they again struck the
grassland; and but a few hundred yards from
its edge, in a slight hollow, they saw the four
buffaloes just entering a herd of fifty or sixty
that were scattered out grazing. The herd
paid no attention to the new-comers, and these
immediately began to feed greedily. After
a whispered consultation, the two hunters crept
back, and made a long circle that brought
them well to leeward of the herd, in line with
a slight rise in the ground. They then crawled
up to this rise and, peering through the tufts
of tall, rank grass, saw the unconscious beasts
a hundred and twenty-five or fifty yards away.
They fired together, each mortally wounding
his animal, and then, rushing in as the herd
halted in confusion, and following them as
they ran, impeded by numbers, hurry, and
panic, they eventually got three more.
On another occasion the same two hunters

1 8 Hunting the Grisly

nearly met with a frightful death, being over
taken by a vast herd of stampeded buffaloes.
All animals that go in herds are subject to
these instantaneous attacks of uncontrollable
terror, under the influence of which they be
come perfectly mad, and rush headlong in
dense masses on any form of death. Horses,
and more especially cattle, often suffer from
stampedes; it is a danger against which the
cowboys are compelled to be perpetually on
guard. A band of stampeded horses, sweep
ing in mad terror up a valley, will dash against
a rock or tree with such violence as to leave
several dead animals at its base, while the
survivors race on without halting; they will
overturn and destroy tents and wagons, and
a man on foot caught in the rush has but a
small chance for his life. A buffalo stampede
is much worse — or rather was much worse, in
the old days — because of the great weight
and immense numbers of the beasts, which,
in a fury of heedless terror, plunged over
cliffs and into rivers, and bore down whatever
was in their path. On the occasion in ques
tion, my brother and cousin were on their way
homeward. They were just mounting one of
the long, low swells, into which the prairie
was broken, when they heard a low, mutter-

The Bison or American Buffalo 19

ing, rumbling noise, like far-off thunder. It
grew steadily louder, and, not knowing what
it meant, they hurried forward to the top of
the rise. As they reached it, they stopped
short in terror and amazement, for before
them the whole prairie was black with madly
rushing buffaloes.

Afterward they learned that another couple
of hunters, four or five miles off, had fired
into and stampeded a large herd. This herd,
in its rush, gathered others, all thundering
along together in uncontrollable and increas
ing panic.

The surprised hunters were far away from
any broken ground or other place of refuge,
while the vast herd of huge, plunging, mad
dened beasts was charging straight down on
them not a quarter of a mile distant. Down
they came! — thousands upon thousands, their
front extending a mile in breadth, while the
earth shook beneath their thunderous gallop,
and, as they came closer, their shaggy front
lets loomed dimly through the columns of
dust thrown up from the dry soil. The two
hunters knew that their only hope for life was
to split the herd, which, though it had so broad
a front, was not very deep. If they failed they
would inevitably be trampled to death.

2o Hunting the Grisly

Waiting until the beasts were in close range,
they opened a rapid fire from their heavy
breech-loading rifles, yelling at the top of
their voices. For a moment the result seemed
doubtful. The line thundered steadily down
on them; then it swayed violently, as two or
three of the brutes immediately in their front
fell beneath the bullets, while their neighbors
made violent efforts to press off sidewise.
Then a narrow wedge-shaped rift appeared in
the line, widening as it came closer, and the
buffaloes, shrinking from their foes in front,
strove desperately to edge away from the dan
gerous neighborhood: shouts and shots were
redoubled; the hunters were almost choked
by the cloud of dust, through which they could
see the stream of dark huge bodies passing
within rifle-length on either side; and in a
moment the peril was over, and the two men
were left alone on the plain, unharmed, though
with their nerves terribly shaken. The herd
careered on toward the horizon, save five in
dividuals which had been killed or disabled
by the shots.

On another occasion, when my brother was
out with one of his friends, they fired at a
small herd containing an old bull; the bull
charged the smoke, and the whole herd fol-

The Bison or American Buffalo 21

lowed him. Probably they were simply stam
peded, and had no hostile intention; at any
rate, after the death of their leader, they
rushed by without doing any damage.

But buffaloes sometimes charged with the
utmost determination, and were then danger
ous antagonists. My cousin, a very hardy and
resolute hunter, had a narrow escape from a
wounded cow which he followed up a steep
bluff or sand cliff. Just as he reached the
summit, he was charged, and was only saved
by the sudden appearance of his dog, which
distracted the cow's attention. He thus es
caped with only a tumble and a few bruises.

My brother also came in for a charge, while
killing the biggest bull that was slain by any
of the party. He was out alone, and saw a
small herd of cows and calves at some dis
tance, with a huge bull among them, towering
above them like a giant. There was no break
in the ground, nor any tree nor bush near
them, but, by making a half-circle, my brother
managed to creep up against the wind behind
a slight roll in the prairie surface, until he
was within seventy-five yards of the grazing
and unconscious beasts. There were some
cows and calves between him and the bull,
and he had to wait some moments before they

22 Hunting the Grisly

shifted position, as the herd grazed onward
and gave him a fair shot; in the interval they
had moved so far forward that he was in plain
view. His first bullet struck just behind the
shoulder; the herd started and looked around,
but the bull merely lifted his head and took a
step forward, his tail curled up over his back.
The next bullet likewise struck fair, nearly
in the same place, telling with a loud "pack!"
against the thick hide, and making the dust
fly up from the matted hair. Instantly the
great bull wheeled and charged in headlong
anger, while the herd fled in the opposite di
rection. On the bare prairie, with no spot of
refuge, it was useless to try to escape, and the
hunter, with reloaded rifle, waited until the
bull was not far off, then drew up his weapon
and fired. Either he was nervous, or the bull
at the moment bounded over some obstacle,
for the ball went a little wild ; nevertheless, by
good luck, it broke a fore-leg, and the great
beast came crashing to the earth, and was slain
before it could struggle to its feet.

Two days after this event, a war party of
Comanches swept down along the river. They
"jumped" a neighboring camp, killing one
man and wounding two more, and at the same
time ran off all but three of the horses belong-

The Bison or American Buffalo 23

ing to our eight adventurers. With the re
maining three horses and one wagon they set
out homeward. The march was hard and te
dious ; they lost their way and were in jeopardy
from quicksands and cloudbursts; they suf
fered from thirst and cold, their shoes gave
out, and their feet were lamed by cactus spines.
At last they reached Fort Griffen in safety, and
great was their ravenous rejoicing when they
procured some bread — for during the final
fortnight of the hunt they had been without
flour or vegetables of any kind, or even coffee,
and had subsisted on fresh meat "straight."
Nevertheless, it was a very healthy, as well as
a very pleasant and exciting experience; and I
doubt if any of those who took part in it will
ever forget their great buffalo-hunt on the
Brazos.

My friend, General W. H. Walker of Vir
ginia, had an experience in the early '^o's with
buffaloes on the upper Arkansas River, which
gives some idea of their enormous numbers at
that time. He was camped with a scouting
party on the banks of the river, and had gone
out to try to shoot some meat. There were
many buffaloes in sight, scattered, according
to their custom, in large bands. When he
was a mile or two away from the river a dull

24 Hunting the Grisly

roaring sound in the distance attracted his
attention, and he saw that a herd of buffalo
far to the south, away from the river, had been
stampeded and was running his way. He
knew that if he was caught in the open by the
stampeded herd his chance for life would be
small, and at once ran for the river. By des
perate efforts he reached the breaks in the
sheer banks just as the buffaloes reached them,
and got into a position of safety on the pin
nacle of a little bluff. From this point of van
tage he could see the entire plain. To the
very verge of the horizon the brown masses
of the buffalo bands showed through the dust
clouds, coming on with a thunderous roar like
that of surf. Camp was a mile away, and the
stampede luckily passed to one sjide of it.
Watching his chance he finally dodged back
to the tent, and all that afternoon watched the
immense masses of buffalo, as band after band
tore to the brink of the bluffs on one side, raced
down them, rushed through the water, up the
bluffs on the other side, and again off over the
plain, churning the sandy, shallow stream into
a ceaseless tumult. When darkness fell there
was no apparent decrease in the numbers that
were passing, and all through that night the
continuous roar showed that the herds were

The Bison or American Buffalo 25

still threshing across the river. Toward dawn
the sound at last ceased, and General Walker
arose somewhat irritated, as he had reckoned
on killing an ample supply of meat, and he
supposed that there would be now no bison
left south of the riven To his astonishment,
when he strolled up on the bluffs and looked
over the plain, it was still covered far and
wide with groups of buffalo, grazing quietly.
Apparently there were as many on that side
as ever, in spite of the many scores of thou
sands that must have crossed over the river
during the stampede of the afternoon and
night. The barren-ground caribou is the only
American animal which is now ever seen in
such enormous herds.

In 1862 Mr. Clarence King, while riding
along the overland trail through western Kan
sas, passed through a great buffalo herd, and
was himself injured in an encounter with a
bull. The great herd was then passing north,
and Mr. King reckoned that it must have cov
ered an area nearly seventy miles by thirty in
extent; the figures representing his rough
guess, made after traveling through the herd
crosswise, and upon knowing how long it took
to pass a given point going northward. This
great herd of course was not a solid mass of

VOL. III. a

26 Hunting the Grisly

buffaloes; it consisted of innumerable bands
of every size, dotting the prairie within the
limits given. Mr. King was mounted on a
somewhat unmanageable horse. On one oc
casion in following a band he wounded a large
bull, and became so wedged in by the mad
dened animals that he was unable to avoid
the charge of the bull, which was at its last
gasp. Coming straight toward him it leaped
into the air and struck the afterpart of tbe
saddle full with its massive forehead. The
horse was hurled to the ground with a broken
back, and King's leg was likewise broken,
while the bull turned a complete somerset
over them and never rose again.

In the recesses of the Rocky Mountains,
from Colorado northward through Alberta,
and in the depths of the subarctic forest be
yond the Saskatchewan, there have always
been found small numbers of the bison, locally
called the mountain buffalo and wood buffalo ;
often indeed the old hunters term these ani
mals "bison," although they never speak of
the plains animals save as buffalo. They form
a slight variety of what was formerly the or
dinary plains bison, intergrading with it; on
the whole they are darker in color, with
longer, thicker hair, and in consequence with

The Bison or American Buffalo 27

the appearance of being heavier-bodied and
shorter-legged. They have been sometimes
spoken of as forming a separate species; but,
judging from my own limited experience, and
from a comparison of the many hides I have
seen, I think they are really the same animal,
many individuals of the two- so-called varie
ties being quite indistinguishable. In fact the
only moderate-sized herd of wild bison in ex
istence to-day, the protected herd in the Yel
lowstone Park, is composed of animals inter
mediate in habits and coat between the moun
tain and plains varieties — as were all the herds
of the Bighorn, Big Hole, Upper Madison,
and Upper Yellowstone valleys.

However, the habitat of these wood and
mountain bison yielded them shelter from
hunters in a way that the plains never could,
and hence they have always been harder to
kill in the one place than in the other; for pre
cisely the same reasons that have held good
with the elk, which have been completely ex
terminated from the plains, while still abun
dant in many of the forest fastnesses of the
Rockies. Moreover, the bison's dull eyesight
is no special harm in the woods, while it is
peculiarly hurtful to the safety of any beast
on the plains, where eyesight avails more than

28 Hunting the Grisly

any other sense, the true game of the plains
being the prong-buck, the most keen-sighted
of American animals. On the other hand, the
bison's hearing, of little avail on the plains, is
of much assistance in the woods; and its ex
cellent nose helps equally in both places.

Though it was always more difficult to kill
the bison of the forests and mountains than
the bison of the prairie, yet now that the
species is, in its wild state, hovering on the
brink of extinction, the difficulty is immeasur
ably increased. A merciless and terrible proc
ess of natural selection, in which the agents
were rifle-bearing hunters, has left as the last
survivors in a hopeless struggle for existence
only the wariest of the bison and those gifted
with the sharpest senses. That this was true
of the last lingering individuals that survived
the great slaughter on the plains is well shown
by Mr. Hornaday in his graphic account of
his campaign against the few scattered buffalo
which still lived in 1886 between the Missouri
and the Yellowstone, along the Big Dry. The
bison of the plains and the prairies have now
vanished; and so few of their brethren of the
mountains and the northern forests are left,
that they can just barely be reckoned among
American game; but whoever is so fortunate

The Bison or American Buffalo 29

as to find any of these animals must work his
hardest, and show all his skill as a hunter if
he wishes to get one.

In the fall of 1889 I heard that a very few
bison were still left around the head of Wis
dom River. Thither I went and hunted faith
fully; there was plenty of game of other kind,
but of bison not a trace did we see. Neverthe
less a few days later that same year I came
across these great wild cattle at a time when
I had no idea of seeing them.

It was, as nearly as we could tell, in Idaho,
just south of the Montana boundary line, and
some twenty-five miles west of the line of
Wyoming. We were camped high among the
mountains, with a small pack-train. On the
day in question we had gone out to find moose,
but had seen no sign of them, and had then
begun to climb over the higher peaks with an
idea of getting sheep. The old hunter who
was with me was, very fortunately, suffering
from rheumatism, and he therefore carried a
long staff instead of his rifle ; I say fortunately,
for if he had carried his rifle it would have
been impossible to stop his firing at such game
as bison, nor would he have spared the cows
and calves.

About the middle of the afternoon we

30 Hunting the Grisly

crossed a low, rocky ridge, above timber line,
and saw at our feet a basin or round valley
of singular beauty. Its walls were formed by
steep mountains. At its upper end lay a small
lake, bordered on one side by a meadow of
emerald green. The lake's other side marked
the edge of the frowning pine forest which
filled the rest of the valley, and hung high
on the sides of the gorge which formed its
outlet. Beyond the lake the ground rose in
a pass evidently much frequented by game in
bygone days, their trails lying along it in thick
zigzags, each gradually fading out after a few
hundred yards, and then starting again in a
little different place, as game trails so often
seem to do.

We bent our steps toward these trails, and
no sooner had we reached the first than the
old hunter bent over it with a sharp excla
mation of wonder. There in the dust were
the unmistakable hoof-marks of a small band
of bison, apparently but a few hours old. They
were headed toward the lake. There had
been half a dozen animals in the party; one
a big bull, and two calves.

We immediately turned and followed the
trail. It led down to the little lake, where
the beasts had spread and grazed on the ten-

The Bison or American Buffalo 31

der, green blades, and had drunk their fill.
The footprints then came together again,
showing where the animals had gathered and
walked off in single file to the forest. Evi
dently they had come to the pool in the early
morning, walking over the game pass from
some neighboring valley, and after drinking
and feeding had moved into the pine forest
to find some spot for their noontide rest.

It was a very still day, and there were nearly
three hours of daylight left. Without a word
my silent companion, who had been scanning
the whole country with hawk-eyed eagerness,
besides scrutinizing the sign on his hands and
knees, took the trail, motioning me to follow.
In a moment we entered the woods, breathing
a sigh of relief as we did so; for while in the
meadow we could never tell that the buffalo
might not see us, if they happened to be lying
in some place with a commanding lookout.

The old hunter was thoroughly roused, and
he showed himself a very skilful tracker. We
were much favored by the character of the
forest, which was rather open, and in most
places free from undergrowth and down tim
ber. As in most Rocky Mountain forests the
timber was small, not only as compared to the
giant trees of the groves of the Pacific Coast,

32 Hunting the Grisly

but as compared to the forests of the North
east. The ground was covered with pine
needles and soft moss, so that it was not diffi
cult to walk noiselessly. Once or twice when
I trod on a small dry twig, or let the nails in
my shoes clink slightly against a stone, the
hunter turned to me with a frown of angry im
patience; but as he walked slowly, continually
halting to look ahead, as well as stooping over
to examine the trail, I did not find it very dif
ficult to move silently. I kept a little behind
him and to one side, save when he crouched to
take advantage of some piece of cover, and
I crept in his footsteps. I did not look at the
trail at all, but kept watching ahead, hoping
at any moment to see the game.

It was not very long before we struck their
day beds, which were made on a knoll, where
the forest was open and wrhere there was much
down timber. After leaving the day beds the
animals had at first fed separately around the
grassy base and sides of the knoll, and had
then made off in their usual single file, going
straight to a small pool in the forest. After
drinking they had left this pool, and traveled
down toward the gorge at the mouth of the
basin, the trail leading along the sides of the
steep hill, which were dotted by open glades;

The Bison or American Buffalo 33

while the roar of the cataracts by which the
stream was broken ascended from below.
Here we moved with redoubled caution, for
the sign had grown very fresh and the animals
had once more scattered and begun feeding.
When the trail led across the glades we
usually skirted them so as to keep in the
timber.

At last, on nearing the edge of one of these
glades we saw a movement among the young
trees on the other side, not fifty yards away.
Peering through the safe shelter yielded by
some thick evergreen bushes, we speedily
made out three bison, a cow, a calf, and a
yearling, grazing greedily on the other side of
the glade, under the fringing timber; all with
their heads up hill. Soon another cow and
calf stepped out after them. I did not wish
to shoot, waiting for the appearance of the
big bull which I knew was accompanying
them.

So for several minutes I watched the great,
clumsy, shaggy beasts, as all unconscious they
grazed in the open glade. Behind them rose
the dark pines. At the left of the glade the
ground fell away to form the side of a chasm ;
down in its depths the cataracts foamed and
thundered; beyond, the huge mountains tow-

34 Hunting the Grisly

ered, their crests crimsoned by the sinking
sun. Mixed with the eager excitement of the
hunter was a certain half melancholy feeling
as I gazed on these bison, themselves part of
the last remnant of a doomed and nearly van
ished race. Few, indeed, are the men who
now have, or ever more shall have, the chance
of seeing the mightiest of American beasts,
in all his wild vigor, surrounded by the tre
mendous desolation of his far-off mountain
home.

At last, when I had begun to grow very
anxious lest the others should take alarm, the
bull likewise appeared on the edge of the
glade, and stood with outstretched head,
scratching his throat against a young tree,
which shook violently. I aimed low, behind
his shoulder, and pulled trigger. At the crack
of the rifle all the bison, without the momen
tary halt of terror-struck surprise so common
among game, turned and raced off at headlong
speed. The fringe of young pines beyond and
below the glade cracked and swayed as if a
whirlwind were passing, and in another mo
ment they reached the top of a very steep in
cline, thickly strewn with bowlders and dead
timber. Down this they plunged with reck
less speed; their surefootedness was a marvel

The Bison or American Buffalo 35

in such seemingly unwieldy beasts. A column
of dust obscured their passage, and under its
cover they disappeared in the forest; but the
trail of the bull was marked by splashes of
frothy blood, and we followed it at a trot.
Fifty yards beyond the border of the forest
we found the stark black body stretched mo
tionless. He was a splendid old bull, still in
his full vigor, with large, sharp horns, and
heavy mane and glossy coat; and I felt the
most exulting pride as I handled and examined
him; for I had procured a trophy such as can
fall henceforth to few hunters indeed.

It was too late to dress the beast that even
ing; so, after taking out the tongue and cut
ting off enough meat for supper and break
fast, we scrambled down to near the torrent,
and after some search found a good spot for
camping. Hot and dusty from the day's hard
tramp, I undressed and took a plunge in the
stream, the icy water making me gasp. Then,
having built a slight lean-to of brush, and
dragged together enough dead timber to burn
all night, we cut long alder twigs, sat down
before some embers raked apart, and grilled
and ate our buffalo meat with the utmost rel
ish. Night had fallen; a cold wind blew up
the valley; the torrent roared as it leaped past

36 Hunting the Grisly

us, and drowned our words as we strove to
talk over our adventures and success; while
the flame of the fire flickered and danced,
lighting up with continual vivid flashes the
gloom of the forest round about

CHAPTER II

THE SLACK BEAR

NEXT to the whitetail deer the black bear
is the commonest and most widely dis
tributed of American big game. It is still
found quite plentifully in northern New Eng
land, in the Adirondacks, Catskills, and along
the entire length of the Aileghanies, as well
as in the swamps and canebrakes of the South
ern States. It is also common in the great
forests of northern Michigan, Wisconsin, and
Minnesota, and throughout the Rocky Moun
tains and the timbered ranges of the Pacific
Coast. In the East it has always ranked
second only to the deer among the beasts of
chase. The bear and the buck were the staple
objects of pursuit of all the old hunters. They
were more plentiful than the bison and elk
even in the long vanished days when these two
great rnonarchs of the forest still ranged east
ward to Virginia and Pennsylvania. The wolf
and the cougar were always too scarce and too
shy to yield much profit to the hunter. The

(37)

38 Hunting the Grisly

black bear is a timid, cowardly animal, and
usually a vegetarian, though it sometimes
preys on the sheep, hogs, and even cattle of
the settler, and is very fond of raiding his corn
and melons. Its meat is good and its fur often
valuable; and in its chase there is much ex
citement, and occasionally a slight spice of
danger, just enough to render it attractive; so
it has always been eagerly followed. Yet it
still holds its own, though in greatly dimin
ished numbers, in the more thinly settled por
tions of the country. One of the standing rid
dles of American zoology is the fact that the
black bear, which is easier killed and less pro
lific than the wolf, should hold its own in the
land better than the latter, this being directly
the reverse of what occurs in Europe, where
the brown bear is generally exterminated be
fore the wolf.

In a few wild spots in the East, in northern
Maine, for instance, here and there in the
neighborhood of the upper Great Lakes, in
the east Tennessee and Kentucky mountains
and the swamps of Florida and Mississippi,
there still lingers an occasional representative
of the old wilderness hunters. These men
live in log-cabins in the wilderness. They do
their hunting on foot, occasionally with the

The Black Bear 39

help of a single trailing dog. In Maine they
are as apt to kill moose and caribou as bear
and deer; but elsewhere the two last, with an
occasional cougar or wolf, are the beasts of
chase which they follow. Nowadays as these
old hunters die there is no one to take their
places, though there are still plenty of back
woods settlers in all of the regions named who
do a great deal of hunting and trapping. Such
an old hunter rarely makes his appearance at
the settlements except to dispose of his peltry
and hides in exchange for cartridges and pro
visions, and he leads a life of such lonely iso
lation as to ensure his individual characteris
tics developing into peculiarities. Most of the
wilder districts in the Eastern States still pre
serve memories of some such old hunter who
lived his long life alone, waging ceaseless war
fare on the vanishing game, whose oddities, as
well as his courage, hardihood, and wood
craft, are laughingly remembered by the older
settlers, and who is usually best known as hav
ing killed the last wolf or bear or cougar ever
seen in the locality.

Generally the weapon mainly relied on by
these old hunters is the rifle; and occasionally
some old hunter will be found even to this
day who uses a muzzle-loader, such as Kit

40 Hunting the Grisly

Carson carried in the middle of the century.
There are exceptions to this rule of the rifle,
however. In the years after the Civil War
one of the many noted hunters of southwest
Virginia and east Tennessee was Wilber
Waters, sometimes called The Hunter of
White Top. He often killed black bear with
a knife and dogs. He spent all his life in
hunting and was very successful, killing the
last gang of wolves to be found in his neigh
borhood; and he slew innumerable bears, with
no worse results to himself than an occasional
bite or scratch.

In the Southern States the planters living
in the wilder regions have always been in the
habit of following the black bear with horse
and hound, many of them keeping regular
packs of bear hounds. Such a pack includes
not only pure-bred hounds, but also cross-bred
animals, and some sharp, agile, hard-biting
fice dogs and terriers. They follow the bear
and bring him to bay but do not try to kill
him, although there are dogs of the big fight
ing breeds which can readily master a black
bear if loosed at him three or four at a time;
but the dogs of these Southern bear-hound
packs are not fitted for such work, and if they
try to close with the bear he is certain to play

The Black Bear 41

havoc with them, disemboweling them with
blows of his paws or seizing them in his arms
and biting through their spines or legs. The
riders follow the hounds through the cane-
brakes, and also try to make cutoffs and station
themselves at open points where they think the
bear will pass, so that they may get a shot at
him. The weapons used are rifles, shotguns,
and occasionally revolvers.

Sometimes, however, the hunter uses the
knife. General Wade Hampton, who has
probably killed more black bears than any
other man living in the United States, fre
quently used the knife, slaying thirty or forty
with this weapon. His plan was, when he
found that the dogs had the bear at bay, to
walk up close and cheer them on. They would
instantly seize the bear in a body, and he
would then rush in and stab it behind the
shoulder, reaching over so as to inflict the
wound on the opposite side from that where
he stood. He escaped scathless from all these
encounters save one, in which he was rather
severely torn in the forearm. Many other
hunters have used the knife, but perhaps none
so frequently as he; for he was always fond
of steel, as witness his feats with the "white
arm" during the Civil War.

42 Hunting the Grisly

General Hampton always hunted with large
packs of hounds, managed sometimes by him
self and sometimes by his negro hunters. He
occasionally took out forty dogs at a time. He
found that all his dogs together could not kill
a big fat bear, but they occasionally killed
three-year-olds, or lean and poor bears. Dur
ing the course of his life he has himself killed
or been in at the death of, five hundred bears,
at least two-thirds of them falling by his own
hand. In the year just before the war he had
on one occasion, in Mississippi, killed sixty-
eight bears in five months. Once he killed
four bears in a day; at another time three, and
frequently two. The two largest bears he
himself killed weighed, respectively, 408 and
410 pounds. They were both shot in Missis
sippi. But he saw at least one bear killed
which was much larger than either of these.
These figures were taken down at the time,
when the animals were actually weighed on
the scales. Most of his hunting for bear was
done in northern Mississippi, where one of
his plantations was situated, near Greenville.
During the half century that he hunted, on
and off, in this neighborhood, he knew of two
instances where hunters were fatally wounded
in the chase of the black bear. Both of the

The Black Bear 43

men were inexperienced, one being a rafts
man who came down the river, and the other
a man from Vicksburg. He was not able to
learn the particulars in the last case, but the
raftsman came too close to a bear that was at
bay, and it broke through the dogs, rushed at
and overthrew him, then lying on him, it bit
him deeply in the thigh, through the femoral
artery, so that he speedily bled to death.

But a black bear is not usually a formidable
opponent, and though he will sometimes
charge home he is much more apt to bluster
and bully than actually to come to close quar
ters. I myself have but once seen a man who
had been hurt by one of these bears. This was
an Indian. He had come on the beast close
up in a thick wood, and had mortally wounded
it with his gun; it had then closed with him,
knocking the gun out of his hand, so that he
was forced to use his knife. It charged him
on all fours, but in the grapple, when it had
failed to throw him down, it raised itself on
its hind legs, clasping him across the shoulders
with its fore-paws. Apparently it had no in
tention of hugging, but merely sought to draw
him within reach of its jaws. He fought des
perately against this, using the knife freely,
and striving to keep its head back; and the

44 Hunting the Grisly

flow of blood weakened the animal, so that it
finally fell exhausted, before being able dan
gerously to injure him. But it had bitten his
left arm very severely, and its claws had made
long gashes on his shoulders.

Black bears, like grislies, vary greatly in
their modes of attack. Sometimes they rush
in and bite; and again they strike with their
fore-paws. Two of my cowboys were origi
nally from Maine, where I knew them well.
There they were fond of trapping bears, and
caught a good many. The huge steel gins,
attached by chains to heavy clogs, prevented
the trapped beasts from going far; and when
found they were always tied tight round some
tree or bush, and usually nearly exhausted.
The men killed them either with a little 32-
calibre pistol or a hatchet. But once did they
meet with any difficulty. On this occasion one
of them incautiously approached a captured
bear to knock it on the head with his hatchet,
but the animal managed to partially untwist
itself, and with its free forearm made a rapid
sweep at him : he jumped back just in time, the
bear's claws tearing his clothes — after which
he shot it. Bears are shy and have very keen
noses; they are therefore hard to kill by fair
hunting, living, as they generally do, in dense

The Black Bear 45

forests or thick brush. They are easy enough
to trap, however. Thus, these two men,
though they trapped so many, never but once
killed them in any other way. On this occa
sion one of them, in the winter, found in a
great hollow log a den where a she and two
well-grown cubs had taken up their abode,
and shot all three with his rifle as they burst
out.

Where they are much hunted, bear become
purely nocturnal; but in the wilder forests I
have seen them abroad at all hours, though
they do not much relish the intense heat of
noon. They are rather comical animals to
watch feeding and going about the ordinary
business of their lives. Once I spent half an
hour lying at the edge of a wood and looking
at a black bear some three hundred yards off
across an open glade. It was in good stalk
ing country, but the wind was unfavorable
and I waited for it to shift — waited too long
as it proved, for something frightened the
beast and he made off before I could get a
shot at him. When I first saw him he was
shuffling along and rooting in the ground, so
that he looked like a great pig. Then he be
gan to turn over the stones and logs to hunt for
insects, small reptiles, and the like. A mod-

46 Hunting the Grisly

erate-sized stone he would turn over with a
single clap of his paw, and then plunge his
nose down into the hollow to gobble up the
small creatures beneath while still dazed by
the light. The big logs and rocks he would
tug and worry at with both paws ; once, over
exerting his clumsy strength, he lost his grip
and rolled clean on his back. Under some of
the logs he evidently found mice and chip
munks; then, as soon as the log was overturned,
he would be seen jumping about with gro
tesque agility, and making quick dabs here
and there, as the little scurrying rodent turned
and twisted, until at last he put his paw on it
and scooped it up into his mouth. Sometimes,
probably when he smelt the mice underneath,
he would cautiously turn the log over with one
paw, holding the other lifted and ready to
strike. Now and then he would halt and snifT
the air in every direction, and it was after one
of these halts that he suddenly shuffled of! into
the woods.

Black bear generally feed on berries, nuts,
insects, carrion, and the like; but at times
they take to killing very large animals. In
fact, they are curiously irregular in their food.
They will kill deer if they can get at them:
but generally the deer are too quick. Sheep

The Black Bear 47

and hogs are their favorite prey, especially
the latter, for bears seem to have a special
relish for pork. Twice I have known a black
bear kill cattle. Once the victim was a bull
which had got mired, and which the bear de
liberately proceeded to eat alive, heedless of
the bellows of the unfortunate beast. On the
other occasion, a cow was surprised and slain
among some bushes at the edge of a remote
pasture. In the spring, soon after the long
winter sleep, they are very hungry, and are
especially apt to attack large beasts at this
time; although during the very first days of
their appearance, when they are just breaking
their fast, they eat rather sparingly, and by
preference the tender shoots of green grass
and other herbs, or frogs and crayfish ; it is not
for a week or two that they seem to be over
come by lean, ravenous hunger. They will
even attack and master that formidable fighter
the moose, springing at it from an ambush as
it passes — for a bull moose would surely be an
overmatch for one of them if fronted fairly
in the open. An old hunter, whom I could
trust, told me that he had seen in the snow in
early spring the place where a bear had sprung
at two moose, which were trotting together;
he missed his spring, and the moose got off,

48 Hunting the Grisly

their strides after they settled down into their
pace being tremendous, and showing how thor
oughly they were frightened. Another time
he saw a bear chase a moose into a lake, where
it waded out a little distance, and then turned
to bay, bidding defiance to his pursuer, the lat
ter not daring to approach in the water. I
have been told — but can not vouch for it —
that instances have been known where the
bear, maddened by hunger, has gone in on a
moose thus standing at bay, only to be beaten
down under the water by the terrible fore-
hoofs of the quarry, and to yield its life in
the contest. A lumberman told me that he
once saw a moose, evidently much startled,
trot through a swamp, and immediately after
ward a bear came up following the tracks.
He almost ran into the man, and was evidently
not in good temper, for he growled and blus
tered, and two or three times made feints of
charging, before he finally concluded to go
off.

Bears will occasionally visit hunters' or
lumbermen's camps, in the absence of the
owners, and play sad havoc with all that there
in is, devouring everything eatable, especially
if sweet, and trampling into a dirty mess what
ever they do not eat. The black bear does

The Black Bear 49

not average more than a third the size of the
grisly; but, like all its kind, it varies greatly
in weight. The largest I myself ever saw
weighed was in Maine, and tipped the scale at
346 pounds; but I have a perfectly authentic
record of one in Maine that weighed 397, and
my friend, Dr. Hart Merriam, tells me that
he has seen several in the Adirondacks that
when killed weighed about 350.

I have myself shot but one or two black
bears, and these were obtained under circum
stances of no especial interest, as I merely
stumbled on them while after other game, and
killed them before they had a chance either
to run or show fight.

VOL. III.

CHAPTER III

OLD EPHPvAIM, THE GRISLY BEAR

THE king of the game beasts of temperate
North America, because the most dan
gerous to the hunter, is the grisly bear; known
to the few remaining old-time trappers of the
Rockies and the Great Plains, sometimes as
"Old Ephraim" and sometimes as "Moccasin
Joe" — the last in allusion to his queer, half-
human footprints, which look as if made by
some misshapen giant, walking in moccasins.
Bear vary greatly in size and color, no less
than in temper and habits. Old hunters speak
much of them in their endless talks over the
camp-fires and in the snow-bound winter huts.
They insist on many species; not merely the
black and the grisly, but the brown, the cinna
mon, the gray, the silver-tip, and others with
names known only in certain localities, such
as the range bear, the roach-back, and the
smut-face. But, in spite of popular opinion
to the contrary, most old hunters are very un
trustworthy in dealing with points of natural
(50)

Old Ephraim, the Grisly Bear 51

history. They usually know only so much
about any given game animal as will enable
them to kill it. They study its habits solely
with this end in view; and once slain they only
examine it to see about its condition and fur.
With rare exceptions they are quite incapable
of passing judgment upon questions of specific
identity or difference. When questioned, they
not only advance perfectly impossible theories
and facts in support of their views, but they
rarely even agree as to the views themselves.
One hunter will assert that the true grisly is
only found in California, heedless of the fact
that the name was first used by Lewis and
Clark as one of the titles they applied to the
large bears of the plains country round the
Upper Missouri, a quarter of a century before
the California grisly was known to fame. An
other hunter will call any big brindled bear a
grisly no matter where it is found; and he and
his companions will dispute by the hour as to
whether a bear of large, but not extreme, size
is a grisly or a silver-tip. In Oregon the cin
namon bear is a phase of the small black bear;
in Montana it is the plains variety of the large
mountain silver-tip. I have myself seen the
skins of two bears killed on the upper waters
of Tongue River; one was that of a male, one

52 Hunting the Grisly

of a female, and they had evidently just mated ;
yet one was distinctly a "silver-tip" and the
other a "cinnamon." The skin of one very big
bear which I killed in the Bighorn has proved
a standing puzzle to almost all the old hunters
to whom I have showed it; rarely do any two
of them agree as to whether it is a grisly, a
silver-tip, a cinnamon, or a "smut-face." Any
bear with unusually long hair on the spine and
shoulders, especially if killed in the spring,
when the fur is shaggy, is forthwith dubbed a
"roach-back." The average sporting writer
moreover joins with the more imaginative
members of the "old hunter" variety in ascrib
ing wildly various traits to these different
bears. One comments on the superior pro\vess
of the roach-back; the explanation being that
a bear in early spring is apt to be ravenous
from hunger. The next insists that the Cali
fornia grisly is the only really dangerous bear;
while another stoutly maintains that it does
not compare in ferocity with what he calls the
"smaller" silver-tip or cinnamon. And so on,
and so on, without end. All of which is mere
nonsense.

Nevertheless, it is no easy task to determine
how many species or varieties of bear actually
do exist in the United States, and I can not

Old Ephraim, the Grisly Bear 53

even say without doubt that a very large set
of skins and skulls would not show a nearly
complete intergradation between the most
widely separated individuals. However, there
are certainly two very distinct types, which
differ almost as widely from each other as a
wapiti does from a mule deer, and which exist
in the same localities in most heavily timbered
portions of the Rockies. One is the small
black bear, a bear which will average about
two hundred pounds' weight, with fine, glossy,
black fur, and the fore-claws but little longer
than the hinder ones; in fact the hairs of the
fore-paw often reach to their tips. This bear
is a tree-climber. It is the only kind found
east of the great plains, and it is also plentiful
in the forest-clad portions of the Rockies, be
ing common in most heavily timbered tracts
throughout the United States. The other is
the grisly, which weighs three or four times as
much as the black, and has a pelt of coarse
hair, which is in color gray, grizzled, or
brown of various shades. It is not a tree-
climber, and the fore-claws are very long,
much longer than the hinder ones. It is found
from the great plains west of the Mississippi
to the Pacific Coast. This bear inhabits indif
ferently the lowland and mountain; the deep

54 Hunting the Grisly

woods, and the barren plains where the only
cover is the stunted growth fringing the
streams. These twTo types are very distinct
in every way, and their differences are not at
all dependent upon mere geographical consid
erations; for they are often found in the same
district. Thus I found them both in the Big
horn Mountains, each type being in extreme
form, while the specimens I shot showed no
trace of intergradation. The huge grizzled,
long-clawed beast, and its little glossy-coated,
short-clawed, tree-climbing brother roamed
over exactly the same country in those moun
tains; but they were as distinct in habits, and
mixed as little together as moose and caribou.
On the other hand, when a sufficient num
ber of bears, from widely separated regions,
are examined, the various distinguishing
marks are found to be inconstant and to show
a tendency — exactly how strong I can not say
—to fade into one another. The differentia
tion of the two species seems to be as yet
scarcely completed; there are more or less im
perfect connecting links, and as regards the
grisly it almost seems as if the specific char
acters were still unstable. In the far North
west, in the basin of the Columbia, the "black"
bear is as often brown as any other color; and

Old Ephraim, the Grisly Bear 55

I have seen the skins of two cubs, one black
and one brown, which were shot when follow
ing the same dam. When these brown bears
have coarser hair than usual their skins are
with difficulty to be distinguished from those
of certain varieties of the grisly. Moreover,
all bears vary greatly in size; and I have seen
the bodies of very large black or brown bears
with short fore-claws which were fully as
heavy as, or perhaps heavier than, some small
but full-grown grislies with long fore-claws.
These very large bears with short claws are
very reluctant to climb a tree; and are almost
as clumsy about it as is a young grisly. Among
the grislies the fur varies much in color and
texture even among bears of the same locality;
it is of course richest in the deep forest, while
the bears of the dry plains and mountains are
of a lighter, more washed-out hue.

A full grown grisly will usually weigh from
five to seven hundred pounds; but exception
al individuals undoubtedly reach more than
twelve hundredweight. The California bears
are said to be much the largest. This I think
is so, but I can not say it with certainty — at
any rate I have examined several skins of full-
grown California bears which were no larger
than those of many I have seen from the north-

56 Hunting the Grisly

ern Rockies. The Alaskan bears, particularly
those of the peninsula, are even bigger beasts ;
the skin of one which I saw in the possession
of Mr. Webster, the taxidermist, was a good
deal larger than the average polar bear skin;
and the animal when alive, if in good condi
tion, could hardly have weighed less than
1,400 pounds.* Bears vary wonderfully in
weight, even to the extent of becoming half as
heavy again, according as they are fat or lean;
in this respect they are more like hogs than
like any other animals.

The grisly is now chiefly a beast of the high
hills and heavy timber; but this is merely be
cause he has learned that he must rely on cover
to guard him from man, and has forsaken the
open ground accordingly. In old days, and in
one or two very out-of-the-way places almost
to the present time, he wandered at will over
the plains. It is only the wariness born of
fear which nowadays causes him to cling to
the thick brush of the large river-bottoms
throughout the plains country. When there
were no rifle-bearing hunters in the land, to
harass him and make him afraid, he roved

* Both this huge Alaskan bear and the entirely distinct
bear of the barren grounds differ widely from the true
grisly, at least in their extreme forms.

Old Ephraim, the Grisly Bear 57

hither and thither at will, in burly self-confi
dence. Then he cared little for cover, unless
as a weather-break, or because it happened to
contain food he liked. If the humor seized
him he would roam for days over the rolling
or broken prairie, searching for roots, digging
up gophers, or perhaps following the great
buffalo herds either to prey on some unwary
straggler which he was able to catch at a dis
advantage in a washout, or else to feast on the
carcasses of those which died by accident. Old
hunters, survivors of the long-vanished ages
when the vast herds thronged the high plains
and were followed by the wild red tribes, and
by bands of whites who were scarcely less sav
age, have told me that they often met bears
under such circumstances; and these bears
were accustomed to sleep in a patch of rank
sage brush, in the niche of a washout, or under
the lee of a bowlder, seeking their food abroad
even in full daylight. The bears of the Upper
Missouri basin — which were so light in color
that the early explorers often alluded to them
as gray or even as "white" — were particularly
given to this life in the open. To this day
that close kinsman of the grisly known as the
bear of the barren grounds continues to lead
this same kind of life, in the far north. My

58 Hunting the Grisly

friend Mr. Rockhill, of Maryland, who was
the first white man to explore eastern Tibet,
describes the large, grisly-like bear of those
desolate uplands as having similar habits.

However, the grisly is a shrewd beast and
shows the usual bear-like capacity for adapt
ing himself to changed conditions. He has in
most places become a cover-haunting animal,
sly in his ways, wary to a degree, and clinging
to the shelter of the deepest forests in the
mountains and of the most tangled thickets in
the plains. Hence he has held his own far
better than such game as the bison and elk.
He is much less common than formerly, but
he is still to be found throughout most of his
former range ; save of course in the immediate
neighborhood of the large towns.

In most places the grisly hibernates, or as
old hunters say "holes up," during the cold
season, precisely as does the black bear; but
as with the latter species, those animals which
live furthest south spend the whole year
abroad in mild seasons. The grisly rarely
chooses that favorite den of his little black
brother, a hollow tree or log, for his winter
sleep, seeking or making some cavernous hole
in the ground instead. The hole is sometimes
in a slight hillock in a river bottom, but more

Old Ephraim, the Grisly Bear 59

often on a hillside, and may be either shallow
or deep. In the mountains it is generally a
natural cave in the rock, but among the foot
hills and on the plains the bear usually has to
take some hollow or opening, and then fashion
it into a burrow to his liking with his big dig
ging claws.

Before the cold weather sets in the bear be
gins to grow restless, and to roam about seek
ing for a good place in which to hole up. One
will often try and abandon several caves or
partially dug-out burrows in succession before
finding a place to its taste. It always endeav
ors to choose a spot where there is little
chance of discovery or molestation, taking
great care to avoid leaving too evident trace
of its work. Hence it is not often that the
dens are found.

Once in its den the bear passes the cold
months in lethargic sleep; yet, in all but the
coldest weather, and sometimes even then, its
slumber is but light, and if disturbed it will
promptly leave its den, prepared for fight or
flight as the occasion may require. Many
times when a hunter has stumbled on the win
ter resting-place of a bear and has left it, as
he thought, without his presence being dis
covered, he has returned only to find that the

6o Hunting the Grisly

crafty old fellow was aware of the danger all
the time, and sneaked off as soon as the coast
was clear. But in very cold weather hiber
nating bears can hardly be wakened from
their torpid lethargy.

The length of time a bear stays in its den
depends of course upon the seventy of the sea
son and the latitude and altitude of the coun
try. In the northernmost and coldest regions
all the bears hole up, and spend half the year
in a state of lethargy; whereas in the south
only the shes with young and the fat he-bears
retire for the sleep, and these but for a few
weeks, and only if the season is severe.

When the bear first leaves its den the fur is
in very fine order, but it speedily becomes thin
and poor, and does not recover its condition
until the fall. Sometimes the bear does not
betray any great hunger for a few days after
its appearance ; but in a short while it becomes
ravenous. During the early spring, when the
woods are still entirely barren and lifeless,
while the snow yet lies in deep drifts, the lean,
hungry brute, both maddened and weakened
by long fasting, is more of a flesh eater than at
any other time. It is at this period that it is
most apt to turn true beast of prey, and show
its prowess either at the expense of the wild

Old Ephraim, the Grisly Bear 61

game, or of the flocks of the settler and the
herds of the ranchman. Bears are very ca
pricious in this respect, however. Some are
confirmed game and cattle killers; others are
not; while yet others either are or are not ac
cordingly as the freak seizes them, and their
ravages vary almost unaccountably, both with
the season and the locality.

Throughout 1889, for instance, no cattle, so
far as I heard, were killed by bears anywhere
near my range on the Little Missouri in west
ern Dakota; yet I happened to know that dur
ing that same season the ravages of the bears
among the herds of the cowmen in the Big
Hole Basin, in western Montana, were very
destructive.

In the spring and early summer of 1888, the
bears killed no cattle near my ranch; but in
the late summer and early fall of that year a
big bear, which we well knew by its tracks,
suddenly took to cattle-killing. This was a
brute which had its headquarters on some very
large brush bottoms a dozen miles below my
ranch house, and which ranged to and fro
across the broken country flanking the river
on each side. It began just before berry time,
but continued its career of destruction long
after the wild plums and even buffalo berries

62 Hunting the Grisly

had ripened. I think that what started it was
a feast on a cow which had mired and died in
the bed of the creek; at least it was not until
after we found that it had been feeding at the
carcass and had eaten every scrap, that we
discovered traces of its ravages among the
livestock. It seemed to attack the animals
wholly regardless of their size and strength ;
its victims including a large bull and a beef
steer, as well as cows, yearlings, and gaunt,
weak trail "doughgies," which had been
brought in very late by a Texas cow-outfit —
for that year several herds were driven up
from the overstocked, eaten-out, and drought-
stricken ranges of the far South. Judging
from the signs, the crafty old grisly, as cun
ning as he was ferocious, usually lay in wait
for the cattle when they carne down to water,
choosing some thicket of dense underbrush
and twisted cottonwoods through which they
had to pass before reaching the sand banks on
the river's brink. Sometimes he pounced on
them as they fed through the thick, low cover
of the bottoms, where an assailant could either
lie in ambush by one of the numerous cattle
trails, or else creep unobserved toward some
browsing beast. When within a few feet a
quick rush carried him fairly on the terrified

Old Ephraim, the Grisly Bear 63

quarry; and though but a clumsy animal com
pared to the great cats, the grisly is far quicker
than one would imagine from viewing his or
dinary lumbering gait. In one or two in
stances the bear had apparently grappled with
his victim by seizing it near the loins and
striking a disabling blow over the small of the
back; in at least one instance he had jumped
on the animal's head, grasping it with his fore-
paws, while with his fangs he tore open the
throat or craunched the neck bone. Some of
his victims were slain far from the river, in
winding, brushy coulies of the Bad Lands,
where the broken nature of the ground ren
dered stalking easy. Several of the ranchmen,
angered at their losses, hunted their foe eager
ly, but always with ill success; until one of
them put poison in a carcass, and thus at last,
in ignoble fashion, slew the cattle-killer.

Mr. Clarence King informs me that he was
once eye-witness to a bear's killing a steer, in
California. The steer was in a small pasture,
and the bear climbed over, partly breaking
down the rails which barred the gateway. The
steer started to run, but the grisly overtook it
in four or five bounds, and struck it a tremen
dous blowr on the flank with one paw, knock
ing several ribs clear away from the spine,

64 Hunting the Grisly

and killing the animal outright by the
shock.

Horses no less than horned cattle at times
fall victims to this great bear, which usually
springs on them from the edge of a clearing
as they graze in some mountain pasture, or
among the foothills ; and there is no other ani
mal of which horses seem so much afraid.
Generally the bear, whether successful or un
successful in its raids on cattle and horses,
comes off unscathed from the struggle; but
this is not always the case, and it has much
respect for the hoofs or horns of its should-be
prey. Some horses do not seem to know how
to fight it at all ; but others are both quick and
vicious, and prove themselves very formidable
foes, lashing out behind, and striking with
their fore-hoofs. I have elsewhere given an
instance of a stallion which beat off a bear,
breaking its jaw.

Quite near my ranch, once, a cowboy in
my employ found unmistakable evidence of
the discomfiture of a bear by a long-horned
range cow. It was in the early spring, and the
cow with her new-born calf was in a brush-
bordered valley. The footprints in the damp
soil were very plain, and showed all that had
happened. The bear had evidently come out

Old Ephraim, the Grisly Bear 65

of the bushes with a rush, probably bent mere
ly on seizing the calf ; and had slowed up when
the cow instead of flying faced him. He had
then begun to walk round his expected dinner
in a circle, the cow fronting him and moving
nervously back and forth, so that her sharp
hoofs cut and trampled the ground. Finally
she had charged savagely; whereupon the
bear had bolted; and, whether frightened at
the charge, or at the approach of some one,
he had not returned.

The grisly is even fonder of sheep and pigs
than is its smaller black brother. Lurking
round the settler's house until after nightfall,
it will vault into the fold or sty, grasp a help
less, bleating fleece-bearer, or a shrieking,
struggling member of the bristly brotherhood,
and bundle it out over the fence to its death.
In carrying its prey a bear sometimes holds
the body in its teeth, walking along on all-
fours and dragging it as a wolf does. Some
times, however, it seizes an animal in its fore
arms or in one of them, and walks awkwardly
on three legs or two, adopting this method in
lifting and pushing the body over rocks and
down timber.

When a grisly can get at domestic animals
it rarely seeks to molest game, the former

66 Hunting the Grisly

being far less wary and more helpless. Its
heaviness and clumsiness do not fit it well for
a life of rapine against shy woodland crea
tures. Its vast strength and determined tem
per, however, more than make amends for
lack of agility in the actual struggle with the
stricken prey; its difficulty lies in seizing, not
in killing, the game. Hence, when a grisly
does take to game-killing, it is likely to attack
bison, moose, and elk; it is rarely able to
catch deer, still less sheep or antelope. In
fact these smaller game animals often show
but little dread of its neighborhood, and,
though careful not to let it come too near, go
on grazing when a bear is in full sight.
Whitetail deer are frequently found at home
in the same thicket in which a bear has its
den, while they immediately desert the tem
porary abiding place of a wolf or cougar.
Nevertheless, they sometimes presume too
much on this confidence. A couple of years
before the occurrence of the feats of cattle-
killing mentioned above as happening near
my ranch, either the same bear that figured in
them, or another of similar tastes, took to
game-hunting. The beast lived in the same
succession of huge thickets which cover for
two or three miles the river bottoms and the

Old Ephraim, the Grisly Bear 67

mouths of the inflowing creeks; and he sud
denly made a raid on the whitetail deer which
were plentiful in the dense cover. The
shaggy, clumsy monster was cunning enough
to kill several of thes'e knowing creatures.
•The exact course of procedure I never could
find out; but apparently the bear lay in wait
beside the game trails, along which the deer
wandered.

In the old days when the innumerable bison
grazed free on the prairie, the grisly some
times harassed their bands as it now does the
herds of the ranchman. The bison was the
most easily approached of all game, and the
great bear could often get near some outlying
straggler, in its quest after stray cows, year
lings, or calves. In default of a favorable
chance to make a prey of one of these weaker
members of the herds, it did not hesitate to
attack the mighty bulls themselves ; and per
haps the grandest sight which it was ever the
good fortune of the early hunters to witness
was one of these rare battles between a hungry
grisly and a powerful buffalo bull. Nowa
days, however, the few last survivors of the
bison are vanishing even from the inacces
sible mountain fastnesses in which they sought
a final refuge from their destroyers.

68 Hunting the Grisly

At present the wapiti is of all wild game
that which is most likely to fall a victim to the
grisly, when the big bear is in the mood to
turn hunter. Wapiti are found in the same
places as the grisly, and in some spots they are
yet very plentiful; they are less shy and ac
tive than deer, while not powerful enough to
beat off so ponderous a foe ; and they live in
cover where there is always a good chance
either to stalk or to stumble on them. At al
most any season bear will come and feast on an
elk carcass; and if the food supply runs short,
in early spring, or in a fall when the berry
crop falls, they sometimes have to do their
own killing. Twice I have come across the
remains of elk, which had seemingly been
slain and devoured by bears. I have never
heard of elk making a fight against a bear;
yet, at close quarters and at bay, a bull elk
in the rutting season is an ugly foe.

A bull moose is even more formidable, be
ing able to strike the most lightning-like blows
with his terrible forefeet, his true weapons of
defence. I doubt if any beast of prey would
rush in on one of these woodland giants, when
his horns were grown, and if he was on his
guard and bent on fight. Nevertheless, the
moose sometimes fall victims to the uncouth

Old Ephraim, the Grisly Bear 69

prowess of the grisly, in the thick wet forests
of the high northern Rockies, where both
beasts dwell. An old hunter who a dozen
years ago wintered at Jackson Lake, in north
western Wyoming, told me that when the
snows got deep on the mountains the moose
came down and took up their abode near the
lake, on its western side. Nothing molested
them during the winter. Early in the spring
a grisly came out of its den, and he found its
tracks in many places, as it roamed restlessly
about, evidently very hungry. Finding little
to eat in the bleak, snow-drifted woods, it soon
began to depredate the moose, and killed
two or three, generally by lying in wait and
dashing out on them as they passed near its
lurking-place. Even the bulls were at that
season weak, and of course hornless, with
small desire to fight; and in each case the rush
of the great bear — doubtless made with the
ferocity and speed which so often belie the
seeming awkwardness of the animal — bore
down the startled victim, taken utterly un
awares before it had a chance to defend itself.
In one case the bear had missed its spring;
the moose going off, for a few rods, with huge
jumps, and then settling down into its char
acteristic trot. The old hunter who followed

70 Hunting the Grisly

the tracks said he would never have deemed
it possible for any animal to make such strides
while in a trot.

Nevertheless, the grisly is only occasionally,
not normally, a formidable predatory beast, a
killer of cattle and of large game. Although
capable of far swifter movement than is prom
ised by his frame of seemingly clumsy strength,
and in spite of his power of charging with as
tonishing suddenness and speed, he yet lacks
altogether the supple agility of such finished
destroyers as the cougar and the wolf ; and for
the absence of this quality no amount of mere
huge muscle can atone. He is more apt to
feast on animals which have met their death
by accident, or which have been killed by
other beasts or by man, than to do his own
killing. He is a very foul feeder, with a
strong relish for carrion, and possesses a grew-
some and cannibal fondness for the flesh of
his own kind ; a bear carcass will toll a brother
bear to the ambushed hunter better than al
most any other bait, unless it is the carcass of
a horse.

Nor do these big bears always content them
selves merely with the carcasses of their breth
ren. A black bear would have a poor chance
if in the clutches of a large, hungry grisly;

Old Ephraim, the Grisly Bear 71

and an old male will kill and eat a cub, es
pecially if he finds it at a disadvantage. A
rather remarkable instance of this occurred in
Yellowstone National Park, in the spring of
1891. The incident is related in the following
letter written to Mr. William Hallett Phillips,
of Washington, by another friend, Mr. El-
wood Hofer. Hofer is an old mountain-man;
I have hunted with him myself, and know his
statements to be trustworthy. He was, at the
time, at work in the Park getting animals for
the National Museum at Washington, and was
staying at Yancey's "hotel" near Tower Falls.
His letter, which was dated June 2ist, 1891,
runs in part as follows :

"I had a splendid Grizzly or Roachback
cub and was going to send him into the
Springs next morning the team was here, I
heard a racket outside went out and found
him dead an old bear that made an 9 1-2 inch
track had killed and partly eaten him. Last
night another one came, one that made an 8
1-2 inch track, and broke Yancy up in the
milk business. You know how the cabins stand
here. There is a hitching-post between the sa
loon and old house, the little bear was killed
there. In a creek close by was a milk house,
last night another bear came there and

72. Hunting the Grisly

smashed the whole thing up, leaving nothing
but a few flattened buckets and pans and
boards. I was sleeping in the old cabin, I
heard the tin ware rattle but thought it was
all right supposed it was cows or horses about.
I don't care about the milk but the damn cuss
dug up the remains of the cub I had buried
in the old ditch, he visited the old meat house
but found nothing. Bear are very thick in
this part of the Park, and are getting very
fresh. I sent in the game to Capt. Anderson,
hear its doing well."

Grislies are fond of fish; and on the Pacific
slope, where the salmon run, they, like so
many other beasts, travel many scores of miles
and crowd down to the rivers to gorge them
selves upon the fish which are thrown up on
the banks. Wading into the water a bear
will knock out the salmon right and left when
they are running thick.

Flesh and fish do not constitute the grisly's
ordinary diet. At most times the big bear is
a grubber in the ground, an eater of insects,
roots, nuts, and berries. Its dangerous fore-
claws are normally used to overturn stones
and knock rotten logs to pieces, that it may
lap up the small tribes of darkness which
swarm under the one and in the other. It digs

Old Ephraim, the Grisly Bear 73

up the camas roots, wild onions, and an occa
sional luckless woodchuck or gopher. If food
is very plenty bears are lazy, but commonly
they are obliged to be very industrious, it be
ing no light task to gather enough ants, beetles,
crickets, tumble-bugs, roots, and nuts to satisfy
the cravings of so huge a bulk. The sign of
a bear's work is, of course, evident to the
most unpracticed eye; and in no way can one
get a better idea of the brute's power than by
watching it busily working for its breakfast,
shattering big logs and upsetting bowlders by
sheer strength. There is always a touch of the
comic, as well as a touch of the strong and ter
rible, in a bear's look and actions. It will tug
and pull, now with one paw, now with two,
now on all fours, now on its hind legs, in the
effort to turn over a large log or stone; and
when it succeeds it jumps round to thrust its
muzzle into the damp hollow and lap up the
affrighted mice or beetles while they are still
paralyzed by the sudden exposure.

The true time of plenty for bears is the
berry season. Then they feast ravenously on
huckleberries, blueberries, kinnikinic berries7
buffalo berries, wild plums, elderberries, and
scores of other fruits. They often smash all
the bushes in a berry patch, gathering the fruit

VOL. III. 4

74 Hunting the Grisly

with half-luxurious, half-laborious greed, sit
ting on their haunches, and sweeping the ber
ries into their mouths with dexterous paws.
So absorbed do they become in their feasts on
the luscious fruit that they grow reckless of
their safety, and feed in broad daylight, al
most at midday; while in some of the thickets,
especially those of the mountain haws, they
make so much noise in smashing the branches
that it is a comparatively easy matter to ap
proach them unheard. That still-hunter is in
luck who in the fall finds an accessible berry-
covered hillside which is haunted by bears;
but, as a rule, the berry bushes do not grow
close enough together to give the hunter much
chance.

Like most other wild animals, bears which
have known the neighborhood of man are
beasts of the darkness, or at least of the dusk
and the gloaming. But they are by no means
such true night-lovers as the big cats and the
wolves. In regions where they know little of
hunters they roam about freely in the day
light, and in cool weather are even apt to take
their noontide slumbers basking in the sun.
Where they are much hunted they finally al
most reverse their natural habits and sleep
throughout the hours of light, only venturing

Old Ephraim, the Grisly Bear 75

abroad after nightfall and before sunrise; but
even yet this is not the habit of those bears
which exist in the wilder localities where they
are still plentiful. In these places they sleep,
or at least rest, during the hours of greatest
heat, and again in the middle part of the
night, unless there is a full moon. They start
on their rambles for food about mid-after
noon, and end their morning roaming soon
after the sun is above the horizon. If the
moon is full, however, they may feed all night
long, and then wander but little in the day
time.

Aside from man, the full-grown grisly has
hardly any foe to fear. Nevertheless, in the
early spring, when weakened by the hunger
that succeeds the winter sleep, it behooves
even the grisly, if he dwells in the mountain
fastnesses of the far Northwest, to beware of
a famished troop of great timber wolves.
These northern Rocky Mountain wolves are
most formidable beasts, and when many of
them band together in time of famine they do
not hesitate to pounce on the black bear and
cougar; and even a full-grown grisly is not
safe from their attacks, unless he can back up
against some rock which will prevent them
from assailing him from behind. A small

76 Hunting the Grisly

ranchman whom I knew well, who lived near
Flathead Lake, once in April found where a
troop of these wolves had killed a good-sized
yearling grisly. Either cougar or wolf will
make a prey of a grisly which is but a few
months old ; while any fox, lynx, wolverine, or
fisher will seize the very young cubs. The old
story about wolves fearing to feast on game
killed by a grisly is all nonsense. Wolves
are canny beasts, and they will not approach
a carcass if they think a bear is hidden near by
and likely to rush out at them ; but under ordi
nary circumstances they will feast not only on
the carcasses of the grisly's victims, but on
the carcass of the grisly himself after he has
been slain and left by the hunter. Of course
wolves would only attack a grisly if in the
most desperate straits for food, as even a vic
tory over such an antagonist must be pur
chased with heavy loss of life; and a hungry
grisly would devour either a wolf or a cougar,
or any one of the smaller carnivora offhand, if
it happened to corner it where it could not get
away.

The grisly occasionally makes its den in a
cave and spends therein the midday hours.
But this is rare. Usually it lies in the dense
shelter of the most tangled piece of woods in

Old Ephraim, the Grisly Bear 77

the neighborhood, choosing by preference
some bit where the young growth is thick and
the ground strewn with bowlders and fallen
logs. Often, especially if in a restless mood
and roaming much over the country, it merely
makes a temporary bed, in which it lies but
once or twice ; and again it may make a more
permanent lair or series of lairs, spending
many consecutive nights in each. Usually the
lair or bed is made some distance from the
feeding ground ; but bold bears, in very wild
localities, may lie close by a carcass, or in the
middle of a berry ground. The deer-killing
bear above mentioned had evidently dragged
two or three of his victims to his den, which
was under an impenetrable mat of bullberries
and dwarf box-alders, hemmed in by a cut
bank on one side and a wall of gnarled cotton-
woods on the other. Round this den, and ren
dering it noisome, were scattered the bones of
several deer and a young steer or heifer.
When we found it we thought we could easily
kill the bear, but the fierce, cunning beast must
have seen or smelt us, for though we lay in
wait for it long and patiently, it did not come
back to its place; nor, on our subsequent visits,
did we ever find traces of its having done so.
Bear are fond of wallowing in the water,

78 Hunting the Grisly

whether in the sand, on the edge of a rapid
plains river, on the muddy margin of a pond,
or in the oozy moss of a clear, cold mountain
spring. One hot August afternoon, as I was
clambering down a steep mountain-side near
Pend'Oreille Lake, I heard a crash some dis
tance below, which showed that a large beast
was afoot. On making my way toward the
spot, I found I had disturbed a big bear as it
w^as lolling at ease in its bath ; the discolored
water showed where it had scrambled hastily
out and galloped off as I approached. The
spring welled out at the base of a high granite
rock, forming a small pool of shimmering
broken crystal. The soaked moss lay in a deep
wet cushion round about, and jutted over the
edges of the pool like a floating shelf. Grace
ful, water-loving ferns swayed to and fro.
Above, the great conifers spread their mur
muring branches, dimming the light, and
keeping out the heat; their brown boles sprang
from the ground like buttressed columns. On
the barren mountain-side beyond the heat was
oppressive. It was small wonder that Bruin
should have sought the spot to cool his gross
carcass in the fresh spring water.

The bear is a solitary beast, and although
many may assemble together, in what looks

Old Ephraim, the Grisly Bear 79

like a drove, on some favorite feeding-ground
—usually where the berries are thick, or by
the banks of a salmon-thronged river — the as
sociation is never more than momentary, each
going its own way as soon as its hunger is satis
fied. The males always live alone by choice,
save in the rutting season, when they seek the
females. Then two or three may come to
gether in the course of their pursuit and rough
courtship of the female; and if the rivals are
well matched, savage battles follow, so that
many of the old males have their heads seamed
with scars made by their fellows' teeth. At
such times they are evil tempered and prone
to attack man or beast upon the slightest prov
ocation.

The she brings forth her cubs, one, two, or
three in number, in her winter den. They are
very small and helpless things, and it is some
time after she leaves her winter home before
they can follow her for any distance. They
stay with her throughout the summer and the
fall, leaving her when the cold weather sets in.
By this time they are well grown; and hence,
especially if an old male has joined the she,
the family may number three or four individ
uals, so as to make what seems like quite a lit
tle troop of bears. A small ranchman who

8o Hunting the Grisly

lived a dozen miles from me on the Little
Missouri once found a she-bear and three
half-grown cubs feeding at a berry-patch in a
ravine. He shot the old she in the small of
the back, whereat she made a loud roaring
and squealing. One of the cubs rushed to
ward her; but its sympathy proved misplaced,
for she knocked it over with a hearty cuff,
either out of mere temper, or because she
thought her pain must be due to an unpro
voked assault from one of her offspring.
The hunter then killed one of the cubs, and
the other two escaped. When bears are to
gether and one is wounded by a bullet, but
does not see the real assailant, it often falls
tooth and nail upon its comrade, apparently
attributing its injury to the latter.

Bears are hunted in many ways. Some are
killed by poison; but this plan is only prac
ticed by the owners of cattle or sheep who
have suffered from their ravages. Moreover,
they are harder to poison than wolves. Most
often they are killed in traps, which are some
times dead-falls, on the principle of the little
figure 4 trap familiar to every American coun
try boy, sometimes log-pens in which the ani
mal is taken alive, but generally huge steel
gins. In some States there is a bounty for the

Old Ephraim, the Grisly Bear 81

destruction of grislies; and in many places
their skins have a market price, although
much less valuable than those of the black
bear. The men who pursue them for the
bounty, or for their fur, as well as the ranch
men who regard them as foes to stock, ordi
narily use steel traps. The trap is very mas
sive, needing no small strength to set, and it
is usually chained to a bar or log of wood,
which does not stop the bear's progress out
right, but hampers and interferes with it, con
tinually catching in tree stumps and the like.
The animal when trapped makes off at once,
biting at the trap and the bar; but it leaves a
broad wake and sooner or later is found tan
gled up by the chain and bar. A bear is by
no means so difficult to trap as a wolf or fox
although more so than a cougar or a lynx.
In wild regions a skilful trapper can often
catch a great many with comparative ease. A
cunning old grisly, however, soon learns the
danger, and is then almost impossible to trap,
as it either avoids the neighborhood altogether
or finds out some way by which to get at the
bait without springing the trap, or else delib
erately springs it first. I have been told of
bears which spring traps by rolling across
them, the iron jaws slipping harmlessly off the

82 Hunting the Grisly

big round body. An old horse is the most
common bait.^

It is, of course, all right to trap bears when
they are followed merely as vermin or for the
sake of the fur. Occasionally, however, hunt
ers who are out merely for sport adopt this
method; but this should never be "done, To
shoot a trapped bear for sport is a thoroughly
unsportsmanlike proceeding. A funny plea
sometimes advanced in its favor is that it is
''dangerous." No doubt in exceptional in
stances this is true ; exactly as it is true that in
exceptional instances it is "dangerous" for a
butcher to knock over a steer in the slaughter
house. A bear caught only by the toes may
wrench itself free as the hunter comes near,
and attack him with pain-maddened f ury ; or if
followed at once, and if the trap and bar are
light, it may be found in some thicket, still
free, and in a frenzy of rage. But even in such
cases the beast has been crippled, and though
crazy with pain and anger is easily dealt with
by a good shot; while ordinarily the poor brute
is found in the last stages of exhaustion, tied
tight to a tree where the log or bar has caught,
its teeth broken to splintered stumps by rabid
snaps at the cruel trap and chain. Some trap
pers kill the trapped grislies with a revolver;

Old Ephraim, the Grisly Bear 83

so that it may easily be seen that the sport is
not normally dangerous. Two of my own
cowboys, Seawell and Dow, were originally
from Maine, where they had trapped a num
ber of black bears; and they always killed
them either with a hatchet or a small 32-
calibre revolver. One of them, Seawell,
once came near being mauled by a trapped
bear, seemingly at the last gasp, which
he had approached most incautiously with
his hatchet.

There is, however, one very real danger to
which the solitary bear-trapper is exposed, the
danger of being caught in his own trap. The
huge jaws of the gin are easy to spring and
most hard to open. If an unwary passer-by
should tread between them and be caught by
the leg, his fate would be doubtful, though he
would probably die under the steadily grow
ing torment of the merciless iron jaws, as they
pressed ever deeper into the sore flesh and
broken bones. But if caught by the arms,
while setting or fixing the trap, his fate would
be in no doubt at all, for it would be impos
sible for the stoutest man to free himself by
any means. Terrible stories are told of soli
tary mountain hunters who disappeared, and
were found years later in the lonely wilder-

84 Hunting the Grisly

ness, as mouldering skeletons, the shattered
bones of the forearms still held in the rusty
jaws of the gin.

Doubtless the grisly could be successfully
hunted with dogs, if the latter were carefully
bred and trained to the purpose, but as yet
this has not been done, and though dogs are
sometimes used as adjuncts in grisly hunting
they are rarely of much service. It is some
times said that very small dogs are the best
for this end. But this is only so with grislies
that have never been hunted. In such a case
the big bear sometimes becomes so irritated
with the bouncing, yapping little terriers or
fice-dogs that he may try to catch them and
thus permit the hunter to creep up on him.
But the minute he realizes, as he speedily does,
that the man is his real foe, he pays no further
heed whatever to the little dogs, who can then
neither bring him to bay nor hinder his flight.
Ordinary hounds, of the kinds used in the
South for fox, deer, wildcat, and black bear,
are but little better. I have known one or
two men who at different times tried to hunt
the grisly with a pack of hounds and fice-dogs
wonted to the chase of the black bear, but
they never met with success. This was prob
ably largely owing to the nature of the country

Old Ephraim, the Grisly Bear 85

in which they hunted, a vast tangled mass of
forest and craggy mountain; but it was also
due to the utter inability of the dogs to stop
the quarry from breaking bay when it wished.
Several times a grisly was bayed, but always
in some inaccessible spot which it took hard
climbing to reach, and the dogs were never
able to hold the beast until the hunters came
up.

Still a well-trained pack of large hounds
which were both bold and cunning could
doubtless bay even a grisly. Such dogs are
the big half-breed hounds sometimes used in
the Alleghanies of West Virginia, which are
trained not merely to nip a bear, but to grip
him by the hock as he runs and either throw
him or twirl him round. A grisly could not
disregard a wary and powerful hound capable
of performing this trick, even though he paid
small heed to mere barking and occasional
nipping. Nor do I doubt that it would be
possible to get together a pack of many large
fierce dogs, trained to dash straight at the
head and hold on like a vise, which could
fairly master a grisly and, though unable, of
course, to kill him, would worry him breath
less and hold him down so that he could be
slain with ease. There have been instances in

86 Hunting the Grisly

which five or six of the big so-called blood-
houndsof the Southern States — not pure blood
hounds at all, but huge, fierce, ban-dogs, with
a cross of the ferocious Cuban bloodhound,
to give them good scenting powers — have by
themselves mastered the cougar and the black
bear. Such instances occurred in the hunting
history of my own forefathers on my mother's
side, who during the last half of the eigh
teenth, and the first half of the present, century
lived in Georgia and over the border in what
are now Alabama and Florida. These big
dogs can only overcome such foes by rushing
in in a body and grappling all together; if they
hang back, lunging and snapping, a cougar or
bear will destroy them one by one. With a
quarry so huge and redoubtable as the grisly,
no number of dogs, however large and fierce,
could overcome him unless they all rushed on
him in a mass, the first in the charge seizing
by the head or throat. If the dogs hung back,
or if there were only a few of them, or if they
did not seize around the head, they would be
destroyed without an effort. It is murder to
slip merely one or two close-quarter dogs at a
grisly. Twice I have known a man take a
large bulldog with his pack when after one of
these big bears and in each case the result

Old Ephraim, the Grisly Bear 87

was the same. In one instance the bear was
trotting when the bulldog seized it by the
cheek, and without so much as altering its gait,
it brushed off the hanging dog with a blow
from the forepaw that broke the latter's back.
In the other instance the bear had come to
bay, and when seized by the ear it got the
dog's body up to its jaws, and tore out the life
with one crunch.

A small number of dogs must rely on their
activity, and must hamper the bear's escape
by inflicting a severe bite and avoiding the
counter-stroke. The only dog I ever heard of
which, single-handed, was really of service
in stopping a grisly, was a big Mexican sheep
dog, once owned by the hunter rTazewell
Woody. It was an agile beast with powerful
jaws, and possessed both intelligence and a
fierce, resolute temper. Woody killed three
grislies with its aid. It attacked with equal
caution and ferocity, rushing at the bear as
the latter ran, and seizing the outstretched
hock with a grip of iron, stopping the bear
short, but letting go before the angry beast
could whirl round and seize it. It was so
active and wary that it always escaped dam
age; and it was so strong and bit so severely
that the bear could not possibly run from it

88 Hunting the Grisly

at any speed. In consequence, if it once came
to close quarters with its quarry, Woody could
always get near enough for a shot.

Hitherto, however, the mountain hunters —
as distinguished from the trappers — who have
followed the grisly have relied almost solely
on their rifles. In my own case about half
the bears I have killed I stumbled across al
most by accident; and probably this propor
tion holds good generally. The hunter may
be after bear at the time, or he may be after
black-tail deer or elk, the common game in
most of the haunts of the grisly; or he may
merely be traveling through the country or
prospecting for gold. Suddenly he comes over
the edge of a cut bank, or round the sharp
spur of a mountain or the shoulder of a cliff
which walls in a ravine, or else the indistinct
game trail he has been following through the
great trees twists sharply to one side to avoid
a rock or a mass of down timber, and behold he
surprises old Ephraim digging for roots, or
munching berries, or slouching along the path,
or perhaps rising suddenly from the lush, rank
plants amid which he has been lying. Or it
may be that the bear will be spied afar root
ing in an open glade or on a bare hill-side.

In the still-hunt proper it is necessary to

Old Ephraim, the Grisly Bear 89

find some favorite feeding ground, where
there are many roots or berry-bearing bushes,
or else to lure the grisly to a carcass. This
last method of "baiting" for bear is under or
dinary circumstances the only way which af
fords even a moderately fair chance of killing
them. They are very cunning, with the sharp
est of noses, and where they have had experi
ence of hunters they dwell only in cover where
it is almost impossible for the best still-hunters
to approach them.

Nevertheless, in favorable ground a man
can often find and kill them by fair stalking,
in berry time, or more especially in the early
spring, before the snow has gone from the
mountains, and while the bears are driven by
hunger to roam much abroad and sometimes
to seek their food in the open. In such cases
the still-hunter is stirring by the earliest dawn,
and walks with stealthy speed to some high
point of observation from which he can over
look the feeding-grounds where he has previ
ously discovered sign. From the coign of
vantage he scans the country far and near,
either with his own keen eyes or with power
ful glasses; and he must combine patience and
good sight with the ability to traverse long
distances noiselessly and yet at speed. He may

90 Hunting the Grisly

spend two or three hours sitting still and look
ing over a vast tract of country before he will
suddenly spy a bear; or he may see nothing
after the most careful search in a given place,
and must then go on half a dozen miles to an
other, watching warily as he walks, and con
tinuing this possibly for several days before
getting a glimpse of his game. If the bear
are digging roots, or otherwise procuring their
food on the bare hill sides and table-lands, it
is of course comparatively easy to see them;
and it is under such circumstances that this
kind of hunting is most successful. Once seen,
the actual stalk may take two or three hours,
the nature of the ground and the direction of
the wind often necessitating a long circuit;
perhaps a gully, a rock, or a fallen log offers
a chance for an approach to within two hun
dred yards, and although the hunter will, if
possible, get much closer than this, yet even
at such a distance a bear is a large enough
mark to warrant risking a shot.

Usually the berry grounds do not offer such
favorable opportunities, as they often lie in
thick timber, or are covered so densely with
bushes as to obstruct the view: and they are
rarely commanded by a favorable spot from
which to spy. On the other hand, as already

Old Ephraim, the Grisly Bear 91

said, bears occasionally forget all their watch
fulness while devouring fruit, and make such
a noise rending and tearing the bushes that, if
once found, a man can creep upon them un
observed.

CHAPTER

HUNTING THE GRISLY

IF out in the late fall or early spring, it is
often possible to follow a bear's trail in
the snow; having come upon it either by
chance or hard hunting, or else having found
where it leads from some carcass on which the
beast has been feeding. In the pursuit one
must exercise great caution, as at such times
the hunter is easily seen a long way off, and
game is always especially watchful for any foe
that may follow its trail.

Once I killed a grisly in this manner. It
was early in the fall, but snow lay on the
ground, while the gray weather boded a storm.
My camp was in a bleak, wind-swept valley,
high among the mountains which form the
divide between the headwaters of the Salmon
and Clark's Fork of the Columbia. All night
I had lain in my buffalo-bag, under the lee of
a windbreak of branches, in the clump of fir-
trees, where I had halted the preceding even
ing. At my feet ran a rapid mountain torrent,
(92)

Hunting the Grisly 93

its bed choked with ice-covered rocks ; I had
been lulled to sleep by the stream's splashing
murmur, and the loud moaning of the wind
along the naked cliffs. At dawn I rose and
shook myself free of the buffalo robe, coated
with hoar-frost The ashes of the fire were
lifeless; in the dim morning the air was bitter
cold. I did not linger a moment, but snatched
up my rifle, pulled on my fur cap and gloves
and strode off up a side ravine ; as I walked
I ate some mouthfuls of venison, left over from
supper.

Two hours of toil up the steep mountain
brought me to the top of a spur. The sun had
risen, but was hidden behind a bank of sullen
clouds. On the divide I halted, and gazed
out over a vast landscape, inconceivably wild
and dismal. Around me towered the stupen
dous mountain masses which make up the
backbone of the Rockies. From my feet, as
far as I could see, stretched a rugged and
barren chaos of ridges and detached rock
masses. Behind me, far below, the stream
wound like a silver ribbon, fringed with dark
conifers and the changing, dying foliage of
poplar and quaking aspen. In front the bot
toms of the valleys were filled with the som
bre evergreen forest, dotted here and there

94 Hunting the Grisly

with black, ice-skimmed tarns; and the dark
spruces clustered also in the higher gorges,
and were scattered thinly along the moun
tain sides. The snow which had fallen lay
in drifts and streaks, while where the wind
had scope it was blown off, and the ground
left bare.

For two hours I walked onward across the
ridges and valleys. Then among some scat
tered spruces, where the snow lay to the depth
of half a foot, I suddenly came on the fresh,
broad trail of a grisly. The brute was evi
dently roaming restlessly about in search of a
winter den, but willing, in passing, to pick up
any food that lay handy. At once I took the
trail, traveling above and to one side, and
keeping a sharp lookout ahead. The bear was
going across wind, and this made my task
easy. I walked rapidly, though cautiously;
and it was only in crossing the large patches
of bare ground that I Had to fear making a
noise. Elsewhere the snow muffled my foot
steps, and made the trail so plain that T scarce
ly had to waste a glance upon it, bending my
eyes always to the front.

At last, peering cautiously over a ridge
crowned with broken rocks, I saw my quarry,
a big, burly bear, with silvered fur. He had

Hunting the Grisly 95

halted on an open hillside, and was busily dig
ging up the caches of some rock gophers or
squirrels. He seemed absorbed in his work,
and the stalk was easy. Slipping quietly back,
I ran toward the end of the spur, and in ten
minutes struck a ravine, of which one branch
ran past within seventy yards of where the
bear was working. In this ravine was a rather
close growth of stunted evergreens, affording
good cover, although in one or two places I
had to lie down and crawl through the snow.
When I reached the point for which I was
aiming, the bear had just finished rooting, and
was starting off. A slight whistle brought him
to a standstill, and I drew a bead behind his
shoulder, and low down, resting the rifle across
the crooked branch of a dwarf spruce. At
the crack he ran off at speed, making no
sound, but the thick spatter of blood splashes,
showing clear on the white snow, betrayed the
mortal nature of the wound. For some min
utes I followed the trail ; and then, topping a
ridge, I saw the dark bulk lying motionless in
a snowdrift at the foot of a low rock-wall,
down which he had tumbled.

The usual practice of the still-hunter who
is after grisly is to toll it to baits. The hun
ter either lies in ambush near the carcass, or

96 Hunting the Grisly

approaches it stealthily when he thinks the
bear is at its meal.

One day while camped near the Bitter Root
Mountains in Montana I found that a bear
had been feeding on the carcass of a moose
which lay some five miles from the little open
glade in which my tent was pitched, and I
made up my mind to try to get a shot at it
that afternoon. I stayed in camp till about
three o'clock, lying lazily back on the bed of
sweet-smelling evergreen boughs, watching the
pack ponies as they stood under the pines on
the edge of the open, stamping now and then,
and switching their tails. The air was still,
the sky a glorious blue; at that hour in the
afternoon even the September sun was hot.
The smoke from the smouldering logs of the
camp fire curled thinly upward. Little chip
munks scuttled out from their holes to the
packs, which lay in a heap on the ground, and
then scuttled madly back again. A couple
of drab-colored whiskey-jacks, with bold mien
and fearless bright eyes, hopped and fluttered
round, picking up the scraps, and uttering an
extraordinary variety of notes, mostly dis
cordant; so tame were they that one of them lit
on my outstretched arm as I half dozed, bask
ing in the sunshine.

Hunting the Grisly 97

When the shadows began to lengthen, I
shouldered my rifle and plunged into the
woods. At first my route lay along a moun
tain side; then for half a mile over a windfall,
the dead timber piled about in crazy confu
sion. After that I went up the bottom of a
valley by a little brook, the ground being car
peted with a sponge of soaked moss. At the
head of this brook was a pond covered with
water-lilies; and a scramble through a rocky
pass took me into a high, wet valley, where
the thick growth of spruce was broken
by occasional strips of meadow. In this
valley the moose carcass lay, well at the up
per end.

In moccasined feet I trod softly through
the soundless woods. Under the dark branches
it was already dusk, and the air had the cool
chill of evening. As I neared the clump
where the body lay, I walked with* redoubled
caution, watching and listening with strained
alertness. Then I heard a twig snap; and
my blood leaped, for I knew the bear was at
his supper. In another moment I saw his
shaggy, brown form. He was working with
all his awkward giant strength, trying to bury
trie carcass, twisting it to one side and the
other with wonderful ease. Once he got an-

VOL. III. 5

98 Hunting the Grisly

gry and suddenly gave it a tremendous cufl
with his paw; in his bearing he had some
thing half humorous, half devilish. I crept
up within forty yards; but for several minutes
he would not keep his head still. Then some
thing attracted his attention in the forest, and
he stood motionless looking toward it, broad
side to me, with his forepaws planted on the
carcass. This gave me my chance. I drew
a very fine bead between his eye and ear, and
pulled the trigger. He dropped like a steer
when struck with a pole-axe.

If there is a good hiding-place handy it is
better to lie in wait at the carcass. One day
on the headwaters of the Madison, I found
that a bear was coming to an elk I had shot
some days before; and I at once determined
to ambush the beast when he came back that
evening. The carcass lay in the middle of a
valley a quarter of a mile broad. The bot
tom of this valley was covered by an open
forest of tall pines; a thick jungle of smaller
evergreens marked where the mountains rose
on either hand. There were a number of large
rocks scattered here and there, one, of very
convenient shape, being only some seventy or
eighty yards from the carcass. Up this I
clambered. It hid me perfectly, and on its

Hunting the Grisly 99

top was a carpet of soft pine needles, on which
I could lie at my ease.

Hour after hour passed by. A little black
woodpecker with a yellow crest ran nimbly
up and down the tree-trunks for some time
and then flitted away with a party of chicka
dees and nut-hatches. Occasionally a Clark's
crow soared about overhead or clung in any
position to the swaying end of a pine branch,
chattering and screaming. Flocks of cross
bills, with wavy flight and plaintive calls, flew
to a small mineral lick near by, where they
scraped the clay with their queer little beaks.

As the westering sun sank out of sight be
yond the mountains these sounds of bird-life
gradually died away. Under the great pines
the evening was still with the silence of pri
meval desolation. The sense of sadness and
loneliness, the melancholy of the wilderness,
came over me like a spell. Every slight noise
made my pulses throb as I lay motionless on
the rock gazing intently into the gathering
gloom. I began to fear that it would grow
too 'dark to shoot before the grisly came.

Suddenly and without warning, the great
bear stepped out of the bushes and trod across
the pine needles with such swift and silent
footsteps that its bulk seemed unreal. It was

ioo Hunting the Grisly

very cautious, continually halting to peer
around; and once it stood up on its hind legs
and looked long down the valley toward the
red west., As it reached the carcass I put a
bullet between its shoulders. It rolled over,
while the woods resounded with its savage
roaring. Immediately it struggled to its feet
and staggered off; and fell again to the next
shot, squalling and yelling. Twice this was
repeated; the brute being one of those bears
which greet every wound with a great out
cry, and sometimes seem to lose their feet
when hit — although they will occasionally
fight as savagely as their more silent brethren.
In this case, the wounds wrere mortal, and the
bear died before reaching the edge of the
thicket.

I spent much of the fall of 1889 hunting on
the headwaters of the Salmon and Snake in
Idaho, and along the Montana boundary line
from the Big Hole Basin and the head of the
Wisdom River to the neighborhood of Red
Rock Pass and to the north and west of
Henry's Lake. During the last fortnight my
companion was the old mountain man, already
mentioned, name Griffeth or Griffin — I can
not tell which, as he was always called either
"Hank" or. "Griff." He was a crabbedly

Hunting the Grioly io-i

honest old fellow, and a very skilful hunter;
but he was worn out with age and rheuma
tism, and his temper had failed even faster
than his bodily strength. He showed me a
greater variety of game than I had ever seen
before in so short a time; nor did I ever be
fore or after make so successful a hunt. But
Ke was an exceedingly disagreeable companion
on account of his surly, moody ways. I gen
erally had to get up first, to kindle the fire
and make ready breakfast, and he was very
quarrelsome. Finally, 'during my absence
from camp one day, while not very far from
Red Rock Pass, he found my whiskey-flask,
which I kept purely for emergencies, and
drank all the contents. When I came back
he was quite drunk. This was unbearable,
and after some high words I left him, and
struck off homeward through the woods on
my own account. We had with us four pack
and saddle horses ; and of these I took a very
intelligent and gentle little bronco mare,
which possessed the invaluable trait of al
ways staying near camp, even when not hob
bled. I was not hampered with much of an
outfit, having only my buffalo sleeping-bag,
a fur coat, and my washing kit, with a couple
of spare pairs of socks and some handker-

Hunting the Grisly

chiefs. A frying-pan, some salt, flour, bak
ing-powder, a small chunk of salt pork, and a
hatchet, made up a light pack, which, with
the bedding, I fastened across the stock sad
dle by means of a rope and a spare packing
cinch. My cartridges and knife were in my
belt; my compass and matches, as always, in
my pocket. I walked, while the little mare
followed almost like a dog, often without
my having to hold the lariat which served as
halter.

The country was for the most part fairly
open, as I kept near the foothills where glades
and little prairies broke the pine forest. The
trees were of small size. There was no regu
lar trail, but the course was easy to keep, and
I had no trouble of any kind save on the sec
ond day. That afternoon I was following
a stream which at last "canyoned up," that is,
sank to the bottom of a canyon-like ravine
impassable for a horse. I started up a side
valley, intending to cross from its head coulies
to those of another valley which would lead
in below the canyon.

However, I got enmeshed in the tangle of
winding valleys at the foot of the steep moun
tains, and as dusk was coming on I halted
and camped in a little open spot by the side

Hunting the Grisly 103

of a small, noisy brook, with crystal water.
The place was carpeted with soft, wet, green
moss, dotted red with the kinnikinnic ber
ries, and at its edge, under the trees where
the ground was dry, I threw down the buffalo
bed on the mat of sweet-smelling pine needles.
Making camp took but a moment. I opened
the pack, tossed the bedding on a smooth spot,
knee-haltered the little mare, dragged up a
few dry logs, and then strolled off, rifle on
shoulder, through the frosty gloaming, to see
if I could pick up a grouse for supper.

For half a mile I walked quickly and si
lently over the pine needles, across a succes
sion of slight ridges separated by narrow,
shallow valleys. The forest here was com
posed of lodge-pole pines, which on the ridges
grew close together, with tall slender trunks,
while in the valleys the growth was more
open. Though the sun was behind the moun
tains there was yet plenty of light by which
to shoot, but it was fading rapidly.

At last, as I was thinking of turning toward
camp, I stole up to the crest of one of the
ridges, and looked over into the valley some
sixty yards off. Immediately I caught the
loom of some large, dark object; and another
glance showed me a big grisly walking slowly

104 Hunting the Grisly

off with his head down. He was quartering
to me, and I fired into his flank, the bullet, as
I afterward found, ranging forward and
piercing one lung. At the shot he uttered a
loud, moaning grunt and plunged forward at
a heavy gallop, while I raced obliquely down
the hill to cut him off. After going a few
hundred feet he reached a laurel thicket, some
thirty yards broad, and two or three times as
long, which he did not leave. I ran up to the
edge and there halted, not liking to venture
into the mass of twisted, close-growing stems
and glossy foliage. Moreover, as I halted, I
heard him utter a peculiar, savage kind of
whine from the heart of the brush. Accord
ingly, I began to skirt the edge, standing on
tiptoe and gazing earnestly to see if I could
not catch a glimpse of his hide. When I was
at the narrowest part of the thicket, he sud
denly left it directly opposite, and then
wheeled and stood broadside to me on the
hillside, a little above. He turned his head
stiffly toward me; scarlet strings of froth
hung from his lips ; his eyes burned like em
bers in the gloom.

I held true, aiming behind the shoulder,
and my bullet shattered the point or lower
end of his heart, taking out a big nick. In-

Hunting the Grisly 105

stantly the great bear turned with a harsh roar
of fury and challenge, blowing the bloody
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 till 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 as me. The rush of his charge carried
him past. As he struck he lurched forward,
leaving a pool of bright blood where his muz
zle hit the ground; but he recovered himself
and made two or three jumps onward, while I
hurriedly jammed a couple of cartridges into
the magazine, my rifle holding only four, all
of which I had fired. Then he tried to pull
up, but as he did so his muscles seemed sud-

io6 Hunting the Grisly

denly to give way, his head drooped, and he
rolled over and over like a shot rabbit. Each
of my first three bullets had inflicted a mortal
wound.

It was already twilight, and I merely opened
the carcass, and then trotted back to camp.
Next morning I returned and with much labor
took off the skin. The fur was very fine, the
animal being in excellent trim, and unusually
bright-colored. Unfortunately, in packing it
out I lost the skull, and had to supply its
place with one of plaster. The beauty of the
trophy, and the memory of the circumstances
under which I procured it, make me value it
perhaps more highly than any other in my
house.

This is the only instance in which I have
been regularly charged by a grisly. On the
whole, the danger of hunting these great bears
has been much exaggerated. At the begin
ning of the present century, when white hunt
ers first encountered the grisly, he was doubt
less an exceedingly savage beast, prone to at
tack without provocation, and a redoubtable
foe to persons armed with the clumsy, small
bore, muzzle-loading rifles of the day. But
at present bitter experience has taught him
caution. He has been hunted for sport, and

Hunting the Grisly 107

hunted for his pelt, and hunted for the bounty,
and hunted as a dangerous enemy to stock,
until, save in the very wildest districts, he
has learned to be more wary than a deer, and
to avoid man's presence almost as carefully
as the most timid kind of game. Except in
rare cases he will not attack of his own ac
cord, and, as a rule, even when wounded, his
object is escape rather than battle.

Still, when fairly brought to bay, or when
moved by a sudden fit of ungovernable anger,
the grisly is beyond peradventure a very dan
gerous antagonist. The first shot, if taken
at a bear a good distance off and previously
unwounded and unharried, is not usually
fraught with much danger, the startled ani
mal being at the outset bent merely on flight.
It is always hazardous, however, to track a
wounded and worried grisly into thick cover,
and the man who habitually follows and kills
this chief of American game in dense timber,
never abandoning the bloody trail whitherso
ever it leads, must show no small degree of
skill and hardihood, and must not too closely
count the risk to life and limb. Bears differ
widely in temper, and occasionally one may
be founH who will not show fight, no matter
how much he is bullied; but, as a rule, a

io8 Hunting the Grisly

hunter must be cautious in meddling with a
wounded animal which has retreated into a
dense thicket, and has been once or twice
roused; and such a beast, when it does turn,
will usually charge again and again, and fight
to the last with unconquerable ferocity. The
short distance at which the bear can be seen
through the underbrush, the fury of his
charge, and his tenacity of life make it neces
sary for the hunter on such occasions to have
steady nerves and a fairly quick and accurate
aim. It is always well to have two men in
following a wounded bear under such con
ditions. This is not necessary, however, and
a good hunter, rather than lose his quarry,
will, under ordinary circumstances^ follow
and attack it, no matter how tangled the fast
ness in which it has sought refuge; but he
must act warily and with the utmost caution
and resolution, if he wishes to escape a ter
rible and probably fatal mauling. An ex
perienced hunter is rarely rash, and never
heedless; he will not, when alone, follow a
wounded bear into a thicket, if by the exer
cise of patience, skill, and knowledge of the
game's habits he can avoid the necessity; but
it is idle to talk of the feat as something which
ought in no case to be attempted. While dan-

Hunting the Grisly 109

ger ought never to be needlessly incurred, it
is yet true that the keenest zest in sport comes
from its presence, and from the consequent
exercise of the qualities necessary to over
come it. The most thrilling moments of an
American hunter's life are those in which,
with every sense on the alert, and with nerves
strung to the highest point, he is following
alone into the heart of its forest fastness the
fresh and bloody footprints of an angered
grisly; and no other triumph of American
hunting can compare with the victory to be
thus gained.

These big bears will not ordinarily charge
from a distance of over a hundred yards; but
there are exceptions to this rule. In the fall
of 1890 my friend Archibald Rogers was
hunting in Wyoming, south of the Yellow
stone Park, and killed seven bears. One, an
old he, was out on a bare tableland, grubbing
for roots, when he was spied. It was early in
the afternoon, and the hunters, who were
on a high mountain slope, examined him for
some time through their powerful glasses be
fore making him out to be a bear. They
then stalked up to the eclge of the wood which
fringed the tableland on one side, but could
get no nearer than about three hundred yards,

no Hunting the Grisly

the plains being barren of all cover. After
waiting for a couple of hours Rogers risked
the shot, in despair of getting nearer, and
wounded the bear, though not very seriously.
The animal made off, almost broadside to,
and Rogers ran forward to intercept it. As
soon as it saw him, it turned and rushed
straight for him, not heeding his secon'd
shot, and evidently bent on charging home.
Rogers then waited until it was within twenty
yards, and brained it with his third bullet.

In fact bears differ individually in courage
and ferocity precisely as men do, or as the
Spanish bulls, of which it is said that not
more than one in twenty is fit to stand the
combat of the arena. One grisly can scarcely
be bullied into resistance; the next may fight
to the end, against any odds, without flinch
ing, or even attack unprovoked. Hence men
of limited experience in this sport, general
izing from the actions of the two or three
bears each has happened to see or kill, often
reach diametrically opposite conclusions as
to the fighting temper anH capacity of the
quarry. Even old hunters — who indeed, as
a class, are very narrow-minded and opin
ionated — often generalize just as rashly as
beginners. One will portray all bears as very

Hunting the Grisly in

dangerous; another will speak and act as if
he deemed them of no more consequence
than so many rabbits. I knew one old hunt
er who had killed a score without ever see
ing one show fight. On the other hand,
Dr. James C. Merrill, U. S. A., who has had
about as much experience with bears as I
have had, informs me that he has been charged
with the utmost determination three times.
In each case the attack was delivered be
fore the bear was wounded or even shot at,
the animal being roused by the approach of
the hunters from his day bed, and charging
headlong at them from a distance of twenty
or thirty paces. All three bears were killed
before they could do any damage. There
was a very remarkable incident connected
with the killing of one of them. It occurred
in the northern spurs of the Bighorn range.
Dr. Merrill, in company with an old hunter,
had climbed clown into a deep, narrow can
yon. The bottom was threaded with well-
beaten elk trails. While following one of
these the two men turned a corner of the
canyon and were instantly charged by an old
she-grisly, so close that it was only by good
luck that one of the hurried shots disabled
her and caused her to tumble over a cut bank

ii2 Hunting the Grisly

where she was easily finished. They found
that she had been lying directly across the
game trail, on a smooth well beaten patch
of bare earth, which looked as if it had been
dug up, refilled, and trampled down. Look
ing curiously at this patch they saw a bit of
hide only partially covered at one end; dig
ging down they found the body of a well
grown grisly cub. Its skull had been crushed,
and the brains licked out, and there were signs
of other injuries. The hunters pondered long
over this strange discovery, and hazarded
many guesses as to its meaning. At last they
decided that probably the cub had been killed,
and its brains eaten out, either by some old
male grisly or by a cougar, that the mother
had returned and driven away the murderer,
and that she had then buried the body and
lain above it, waiting to wreak her vengeance
on the first passer-by.

Old Tazewell Woody, during his thirty
years' life as a hunter in the Rockies and on
the great plains, killed very many grislies,
He always exercised much caution in dealing
with them; and, as it happened, he was by
some suitable tree in almost every case when
he was charged. He would accordingly climb
the tree (a practice of which I do not approve

Hunting the Grisly 113

however) ; and the bear would look up at
him and pass on without stopping. Once,
when he was hunting in the mountains with a
companion, the latter, who was down in a val
ley, while Woody was on the hillside, shot at
a bear. The first thing Woody knew the
wounded grisly, running uphill, was almost
on him from behind. As he turned it seized
his rifle in its jaws. He wrenched the rifle
round, while the bear still gripped it, and
pulled trigger, sending a bullet into its shoul
der; whereupon it struck him with its paw,
and knocked him over the rocks. By good
luck he fell in a snow bank and was not hurt
in the least. Meanwhile the bear went on
and they never got it.

Once he had an experience with a bear
which showed a very curious mixture of rash
ness and cowardice. He and a companion
were camped in a little tepee or wigwam, with
a bright fire in front of it, lighting up the
night. There was an inch of snow on the
ground. Just after they went to bed a grisly
came close to camp. Their dog rushed out
and they could hear it bark roun'd in the dark
ness for nearly an hour; then the bear drove
it off and came right into camp. It went close
to the fire, picking up the scraps of meat and

ii4 Hunting the Grisly

bread, pulled a haunch of venison down from
a tree, and passed and repassed in front of
the tepee, paying no heed whatever to the two
men, who crouched in the doorway talking
to one another. Once it passed so close that
Woody could almost touch it. Finally his
companion fired into it, and off it ran, badly
wounded, without an attempt at retaliation.
Next morning they followed its tracks in the
snow, and found it a quarter of a mile away.
It was near a pine and had buried itself under
the loose earth, pine needles, and snow;
Woody's companion almost walked over it,
and putting his rifle to its ear blew out its
brains.

In all his experience Woody had personally
seen but four men who were badly mauled by
bears. Three of these were merely wounded.
One was bitten terribly in the back. Another
had an arm partially chewed off. The third
was a man named George Dow, and the acci
dent happened to him on the Yellowstone,
about the year 1878. He was with a pack
animal at the time, leading it on a trail through
a wood. Seeing a big she-bear with cubs he
yelled at her; whereat she ran away, but only
to cache her cubs, and in a minute, having
hidden them, came racing back at him. His

Hunting the Grisly 115

pack animal being slow he started to climb a
tree; but before he could get far enough up
she caught him, almost biting a piece out of
the calf of his leg, pulled him down, bit and
cuffed him two or three times, and then went
on her way.

The only time Woody ever saw a man killed
by a bear was once when he had given a touch
of variety to his life by shipping on a New
Bedford whaler which had touched at one of
the Puget Sound ports. The whaler went up
to a part of Alaska where bears were very
plentiful and bold. One day a couple of
boats7 crews landed; and the men, who were
armed only with an occasional harpoon or
larice, scattered over the beach, one of them,
a Frenchman, wading into the water after
shell-fish. Suddenly a bear emerged from
some bushes and charged among the aston
ished sailors, who scattered in every direc
tion; but the bear, said Woody, "just had it
in for that Frenchman," and went straight at
him. Shrieking with terror he retreated up
to his neck in the water; but the bear plunged
in after him, caught him, and disemboweled
him. One of the Yankee mates then fired a
bomb lance into the bear's hips, and the sav
age beast hobbled off into the dense cover of

n6 Hunting the Grisly

the low scrub, where the enraged sailor folk
were unable to get at it.

The truth is that while the grisly generally
avoids a battle if possible, and often acts with
great cowardice, it is never safe to take lib
erties with him; he usually fights desperately
and dies hard when wounded and cornered,
and exceptional individuals take the aggres
sive on small provocation.

During the years I lived on the frontier I
came in contact with many persons who had
been severely mauled or even crippled for life
by grislies; and a number of cases where they
killed men outright were also brought under
my ken. Generally these accidents, as was
natural, occurred to hunters who had roused
or wounded the game.

A fighting bear sometimes uses his claws
and sometimes his teeth. I have never known
one to attempt to kill an antagonist by hug
ging, in spite of the popular belief to this
effect; though he will sometimes draw an
enemy toward him with his paws the better
to reach him with his teeth, and to hold him
so that he can not escape from the biting.
Nor does the bear often advance on his hind
legs to the attack; though, if the man has
come close to him in thick underbrush, or has

Hunting the Grisly 117

stumbled on him in his lair unawares, he will
often rise up in this fashion and strike a sin
gle blow. He will also rise in clinching with
a man on horseback. In 1882 a mounted In
dian was killed in this manner on one of the
river bottoms some miles below where my
ranch house now stands, not far from the junc
tion of the Beaver and Little Missouri. The
bear had been hunted into a thicket by a band
of Indians, in whose company my informant,
a white squaw-man, with whom I afterward
did some trading, was traveling. One of them
in the excitement of the pursuit rode across
the end of the thicket; as he did so the great
beast sprang at him with wonderful quick
ness, rising on its hind legs, and knocking
over the horse and rider with a single sweep
of its terrible fore-paws. It then turned on
the fallen man and tore him open, and though
the other Indians came promptly to his res
cue and slew his assailant, they were not in
time to save their comrade's life.

A bear is apt to rely mainly on his teeth or
claws according to whether his efforts are di
rected primarily to killing his foe or to mak
ing good his own escape. In the latter event
he trusts chiefly to his claws. If cornered, he
of course makes a rush for freedom, and in

n8 Hunting the Grisly

that case he downs any man who is in his way
with a sweep of his great paw, but passes on
without stopping to bite him. If while sleep
ing or resting in thick brush some one sud
denly stumbles on him close up he pursues
the same course, less from anger than from
fear, being surprised and startled. Moreover,
if attacked at close quarters by men and dogs
he strikes right and left in defence.

Sometimes what is called a charge is rather
an effort to get away. In localities where he
has been hunted, a bear, like every other kind
of game, is always on the lookout for an at
tack, and is prepared at any moment for im
mediate flight. He seems ever to have in his
mind, whether feeding, sunning himself, or
merely roaming around, the direction — usu
ally toward the thickest cover or most broken
ground — in which he intends to run if mo
lested. When shot at he instantly starts to
ward this place; or he may be so confused
that he simply runs he knows not whither;
and in either event he may take a line that
leads almost directly to or by the hunter, al
though he had at first no thought of charg
ing. In such a case he usually strikes a sin
gle knock-down blow and gallops on with
out halting, though that one blow may have

Hunting the Grisly 119

taken life. If the claws are long and fairly
sharp (as in early spring, or even in the fall,
if the animal has been working over soft
ground) they add immensely to the effect of
the blow, for they cut like blunt axes. Often,
however, late in the season, and if the ground
has been dry and hard, or rocky, the claws are
worn down nearly to the quick, and the blow
is then given mainly with the under side of
the paw; although even under this disadvan
tage a thump from a big bear will down a
horse or smash in a man's breast. The hunter
Hofer once lost a horse in this manner. He
shot at and wounded a bear which rushed
off, as ill luck would have it, past the place
where his horse was picketed ; probably more
in fright than in anger it struck the poor
beast a blow which, in the end, proved mortal.
If a bear means mischief and charges not to
escape but to do damage, its aim is to grapple
with or throw down its foe and bite him to
death. The charge is made at a gallop, the
animal sometimes coming on silently, with
the mouth shut, and sometimes with the jaws
open, the lips drawn back and teeth showing,
uttering at the same time a succession of roars
or of savage rasping snarls. Certain bears
charge without any bluster and perfectly

120 Hunting the Grisly

straight; while others first threaten and bully,
and even when charging stop to growl, shake
the head, and bite at a bush or knock holes
in the ground with their fore-paws. Again,
some of them charge home with a ferocious
resolution which their extreme tenacity of life
renders especially dangerous ; while others can
be turned or driven back even by a shot which
is not mortal. They show the same variabil
ity in their behavior when wounded. Often
a big bear, especially if charging, will receive
a bullet in perfect silence, without flinching
or seeming to pay any heed to it; while an
other will cry out and tumble about, and if
charging, even though it may not abandon the
attack, will pause for a moment to whine or
bite at the wound.

Sometimes a single bite causes death. One
of the most successful bear hunters I ever
knew, an old fellow whose real name I never
heard as he was always called Old Ike, was
killed in this way in the spring or early sum
mer of 1886 on one of the head-waters of the
Salmon. He was a very good shot, had killed
nearly a hundred bears with the rifle, and, al
though often charged, had never met with
any accident, so that he had grown somewhat
careless. On the day in question he had met a

Hunting the Grisly 121

couple of mining prospectors and was travel
ing with them, when a grisly crossed his path.
The old hunter immediately ran after it, rap
idly gaining, as the bear did not hurry when
it saw itself pursued, but slouched slowly for
ward, occasionally turning its head to grin and
growl. It soon went into a dense grove of
young spruce, and as the hunter reached the
edge it charged fiercely out. He fired one
hasty shot, evidently wounding the animal,
but not seriously enough to stop or cripple
it; and as his two companions ran forward
they saw the bear seize him with its wide
spread jaws, forcing him to the ground. They
shouted and fired, and the beast abandoned
the fallen man on the instant and sullenly re
treated into the spruce thicket, whither they
dared not follow it. Their friend was at his
last gasp; for the whole side of the chest had
been crushed in by the one bite, the lungs
showing between the rent ribs.

Very often, however, a bear 'does not kill
a man by one bite, but after throwing him
lies on him, biting him to death. Usually, if
no assistance is at hand, such a man is doomed;
although if Ke pretends to be dead, and has
the nerve to lie quiet under very rough treat
ment, it is just possible that the bear may

VOL. III. 6

122 Hunting the Grisly

leave him alive, perhaps after half burying
what it believes to be the body. In a very
few exceptional instances men of extraordi
nary prowess with the knife have succeeded
in beating off a bear, and even in mortally
wounding it, but in most cases a single-
handed struggle, at close quarters, with a
grisly bent on mischief, means death.

Occasionally the bear, although vicious, is
also frightened, and passes on after giving one
or two bites; and frequently a man who is
knocked down is rescued by his friends be
fore he is killed, the big beast mayhap using
his weapons with clumsiness. So a bear may
kill a foe with a single blow of its mighty fore
arm, either crushing in the head or chest by
sheer force of sinew, or else tearing open the
body with its formidable claws ; and so on the
other hand he may, and often does, merely dis
figure or maim the foe by a hurried stroke.
Hence it is common to see men who have es
caped the clutches of a grisly, but only at the
cost of features marred beyond recognition,
or a body rendered almost helpless for life.
Almost every old resident of western Mon
tana or northern Idaho has known two or
three unfortunates who have suffered in this
manner. I have myself met one such man

Hunting the Grisly 123

in Helena, and another in Missoula; both
were living at least as late as 1889, the date
at which I last saw them. One had been par
tially scalped by a bear's teeth; the animal
was very old and so the fangs did not enter
the skull. The other had been bitten across
the face, and the wounds never entirely
healed, so that his disfigured visage was
hideous to behold.

Most of these accidents occur in following
a wounded or worried bear into thick cover;
and under such circumstances an animal ap
parently hopelessly disabled, or in the death
throes, may with a last effort kill one or more
of its assailants. In 1874 my wife's uncle,
Captain Alexander Moore, U. S. A., and my
friend Captain Bates, with some men of the
ad and 3d Cavalry, were scouting in Wyo
ming, near the Freezeout Mountains. One
morning they roused a bear in the open
prairie and followed it at full speed as it ran
toward a small creek. At one spot in the
creek beavers had built a dam, and as usual
in such places there was a thick growth of
bushes and willow saplings. Just as the bear
reached the edge of this little jungle it was
struck by several balls, both of its forelegs
being broken. Nevertheless, it managed to

124 Hunting the Grisly

shove itself forward on its hind-legs, and
partly rolled, partly pushed itself into the
thicket, the bushes though low being so dense
that its body was at once completely hidden.
The thicket was a mere patch of brush, not
twenty yards across in any direction. The
leading troopers reached the edge almost as
the bear tumbled in. One of them, a tall and
powerful man named Miller, instantly dis
mounted and prepared to force his way in
among the dwarfed willows, which were but
breast-high. Among the men who had rid
den up were Moore and Bates, and also the
two famous scouts, Buffalo Bill — long a com
panion of Captain Moore, — and California
Joe, Custer's faithful follower. California
Joe had spent almost all his life on the plains
and in the mountains, as a hunter and Indian
fighter; and when he saw the trooper about to
rush into the thicket he called out to him not
to do so, warning him of the danger. 'But the
man was a very reckless fellow and he an
swered by jeering at the old hunter for his
over-caution in being afraid of a crippled
bear. California Joe made no further effort
to dissuade him, remarking quietly: "Very
well, sonny, go in; it's your own affair." Mil
ler then leaped off the bank on which they

Hunting the Grisly 125

stood and strode into the thicket, holding his
rifle at the port. Hardly had he taken three
steps when the bear rose in front of him, roar
ing with rage and pain. It was so close that
the man had no chance to fire. Its fore-arms
hung useless and as it reared unsteadily on its
hind-legs, lunging forward at him, he seized
it by the ears and strove to hold it back. His
strength was very great, and he actually kept
the huge head from his face and braced him
self so that he was not overthrown; but the
bear twisted its muzzle from side to side, bit
ing and tearing the man's arms and shoulders.
Another soldier jumping down slew the beast
with a single bullet, and rescued his comrade;
but though alive he was too badly hurt to
recover and died after reaching the hospital.
Buffalo Bill was given the bear-skin, and I
believe he has it now.

The instances in whicK hunters who have
rashly followed grislies into thick cover have
been killed or severely mauled might be mul
tiplied indefinitely. I have myself known
of eight cases in which men have met their
deaths in this manner.

It occasionally happens that a cunning old
grisly will lie so close that the hunter almost
steps on him ; and he then rises suddenly with

i26 Hunting the Grisly

a loud, coughing growl and strikes down or
seizes the man before the latter can fire off
his rifle. More rarely a bear which is both
vicious and crafty deliberately permits the
hunter to approach fairly near to, or per
haps pass by, its hiding-place, and then
suddenly charges him with such rapidity
that he has barely time for the most hur
ried shot. The danger in such a case is of
course great.

Ordinarily, however, even in the brush, the
bear's object is to slink away, not to fight,
and very many are killed even under the most
unfavorable circumstances without accident.
If an unwounded bear thinks itself unob
served it is not apt to attack; and in thick
cover it is really astonishing to see how one
of these large animals can hide, and how close
ly it will lie when there is danger. About
twelve miles below my ranch there are some
large river bottoms and creek bottoms cov
ered with a matted mass of cottonwood, box-
alders, bullberry bushes, rosebushes, ash, wild
plums, and other bushes. These bottoms have
harbored bear ever since I first saw them;
but, though often in company with a large
party, I have repeatedly beaten through them,
and though we must at times have been very

Hunting the Grisly 127

near indeed to the game, we never so much
as heard it run.

When bears are shot, as they usually must
be, in open timber or on the bare mountain,
the risk is very much less. Hundreds may
thus be killed with comparatively little dan
ger; yet even under these circumstances they
will often charge, and sometimes make their
charge good. The spice of danger, especially
to a man armed with a good repeating rifle,
is only enough to add zest to the chase, and
the chief triumph is in outwitting the wary
quarry and getting within range. Ordinarily
the only excitement is in the stalk, the bear
doing nothing more than keep a keen lookout
and manifest the utmost anxiety to get away.
As is but natural, accidents occasionally oc
cur; yet they are usually due more to some
failure in man or weapon than to the prowess
of the bear. A good hunter whom I once
knew, at a time when he was living in Butte,
received fatal injuries from a bear he attacked
in open woodland. The beast charged after
the first shct, but slackened its pace on com
ing almost up to the man. The latter's gun
jammed, and as he was endeavoring to work
it he kept stepping slowly back, facing the
bear which followed a few yards distant,

128 Hunting the Grisly

snarling and threatening. Unfortunately
while thus walking backward the man struck
a dead log and fell over it, whereupon the
beast instantly sprang upon him and mortally
wounded him before help arrived.

On rare occasions men who are not at the
time hunting it fall victims to the grisly.
This is usually because they stumble on it un
awares and the animal attacks them more in
fear than in anger. One such case, resulting
fatally, occurred near my own ranch. The
man walked almost over a bear while crossing
a little point of brush, in a bend of the river,
and was brained with a single blow of the
paw. In another instance which came to my
knowledge the man escaped with a shaking
up, and without even a fright. His name
was Perkins, and he was out gathering huckle
berries in the woods on a mountain side near
Pend d'Oreille Lake. Suddenly he was sent
flying head over heels, by a blow wrhich com
pletely knocked the breath out of his body;
and so instantaneous was the whole affair that
all he could ever recollect about it was get
ting a vague glimpse of the bear just as he
was bowled over. When he came to he found
himself lying some distance down the hill
side, much shaken, and without his berry pail,

Hunting the Grisly 129

which had rolled a hundred yards below him,
but not otherwise the worse for his misad
venture; while the footprints showed that the
bear, after delivering the single hurried stroke
at the unwitting disturber of its day-dreams,
had run off uphill as fast as it was able.

A she-bear with cubs is a proverbially dan
gerous beast; yet even under such conditions
different grislies act in directly opposite ways.
Some she-grislies, when their cubs are young,
but are able to follow them about, seem al
ways worked up to the highest pitch of anx
ious and jealous rage, so that they are likely
to attack unprovoked any intruder or even
passer-by. Others when threatened by the
hunter leave their cubs to their fate without
a visible qualm of any kind, and seem to
think only of their own safety.

In 1882 Mr. Caspar W. Whitney, now of
New York, met with a very singular adven
ture with a she-bear and cub. He was in
Harvard when I was, but left it and, like a
good many other Harvard men of that time,
took to cow-punching in the West. He went
on a ranch in Rio Arriba County, New Mexi
co, and was a keen hunter, especially fond of
the chase of cougar, bear, and elk. One day
while riding a stony mountain trail he saw

130 Hunting the Grisly

a little grisly cub watching him from the
chaparral above, and he dismounted to try to
capture it; his rifle was a 40-90 Sharps. Just
as he neared the cub, he heard a growl and
caught a glimpse of the old she, and he at
once turned uphill, and stood under some tall,
quaking aspens. From this spot he fired at
and wounded the she, then seventy yards off;
and she charged furiously. He hit her again,
but as she kept coming like a thunderbolt he
climbed hastily up the aspen, dragging his
gun with him, as it had a strap. When the
bear reached the foot of the aspen she reared,
and bit and clawed the slender trunk, shak
ing it for a moment, and he shot her through
the eye. Off she sprang for a few yards, and
then spun round a dozen times, as if dazed
or partially stunned; for the bullet had not
touched the brain. Then the vindictive and
resolute beast came back to the tree and again
reared up against it; this time to receive a bul
let that dropped her lifeless. Mr0 Whitney
then climbed down and walked to where the
cub had been sitting as a looker-on, The lit-
tie animal did not move until he reache'd out
his hand; when it suddenly struck at him
like an angry cat, dived into the bushes, and
was seen no more.

Hunting the Grisly 131

In the summer of 1888 an old-time trapper,
named Charley Norton, while on Loon Creek,
of the middle fork of the Salmon, meddled
with a she and her cubs. She ran at him and
with one blow of her paw almost knocked
off his lower jaw; yet he recovered, and was
alive when I last heard of him.

Yet the very next spring the cowboys with
my own wagon on the Little Missouri round
up killed a mother bear which made but little
more fight than a coyote. She had two cubs,
and was surprised in the early morning on the
prairie far from cover. There were eight or
ten cowboys together at the time, just starting
off on a long circle, and of course they all got
down their ropes in a second, and putting
spurs to their fiery little horses started toward
the bears at a run, shouting and swinging
their loops round their heads. For a moment
the old she tried to bluster and made a half
hearted threat of charging; but her courage
failed before the rapid onslaught of her yell
ing, rope-swinging assailants; and she took
to her heels and galloped off, leaving the cubs
to shift for themselves. The cowboys were
close behind, however, and after half a mile's
run she bolted into a shallow cave or hole in
the side of a butte, where she stayed cowering

132 Hunting the Grisly

and growling, until one of the men leaped off
his horse, ran up to the edge of the hole, and
killed her with a single bullet from his re
volver, fired so close that the powder burned
her hair. The unfortunate cubs \vere roped,
and then so dragged about that they were
speedily killed instead of being brought alive
to camp, as ought to have been done.

In the cases mentioned above the grisly at
tacked only after having been itself assailed,
or because it feared an assault, for itself or
for its young. In the old days, however, it
may almost be said that a grisly was more apt
to attack than to flee. Lewis and Clark and
the early explorers who immediately suc
ceeded them, as well as the first hunters and
trappers, the "Rocky Mountain men" of the
early decades of the present century, were
repeatedly assailed in this manner; and not
a few of the bear hunters of that period found
that it was unnecessary to take much trouble
about approaching their quarry, as the grisly
was usually prompt to accept the challenge
and to advance of its own accord, as soon as
it discovered the foe. All this is changed now.
Yet even at the present day an occasional
vicious old bear may be found, in some far-off
and little-trod fastness, which still keeps up

Hunting the Grisly 133

the former habit of its kind. All old hunters
have tales of this sort to relate, the prowess,
cunning, strength, and ferocity of the grisly
being favorite topics for camp-fire talk
throughout the Rockies; but in most cases
it is not safe to accept these stories without
careful sifting.

Still, it is just as unsafe to reject them all.
One of my own cowboys was once attacked
by a grisly, seemingly in pure wantonness.
He was riding up a creek bottom, and had
just passed a clump of rose and bullberry
bushes when his horse gave such a leap as al
most to unseat him, and then darted madly
forward. Turning round in the saddle, to his
utter astonishment he saw a large bear gallop
ing after him, at the horse's heels. For a few
jumps the race was close, then the horse drew
away and the bear wheeled and went into a
thicket of wild plums. The amazed and in-
idignant cowboy, as soon as he could rein in
his steed, drew his revolver an'd rode back
to and around the thicket, endeavoring to pro
voke his late pursuer to come out and try con
clusions on more equal terms; but prudent
Ephraim had apparently repented of his
freak of ferocious bravado, and declined to
leave the secure shelter of the jungle.

134 Hunting the Grisly

Other attacks are of a much more explicable
nature. Mr. Huffman, the photographer of
Miles City, informed me that once when
butchering some slaughtered elk he was
charged twice by a she-bear and twro well-
grown cubs. This wras a piece of sheer bul
lying, undertaken solely with the purpose of
driving away the man and feasting on the
carcasses; for in each charge the three bears,
after advancing writh much blustering, roar
ing, and growling, halted just before coming
to close quarters. In another instance a gen
tleman I once knew, a Mr. S. Carr, was
charged by a grisly from mere ill temper at
being disturbed at meal-time. The man was
riding up a valley; and the bear was at an
elk carcass, near a clump of firs. As soon
as it became aware of the approach of the
horseman, while he was yet over a hundred
yards distant, it jumped on the carcass, looked
at him a moment, and then ran straight for
him. There was no particular reason why it
should have charged, for it was fat and in
good trim, though when killed its head showed
scars made by the teeth of rival grislies. Ap
parently it had been living so well, princi
pally on flesh, that it had become quarrel
some; and perhaps its not over sweet dispo-

Hunting the Grisly 135

sition had been soured by combats with others
of its own kind. In yet another case, a grisly
charged with even less excuse. An old trap
per, from whom I occasionally bought fur,
was toiling up a mountain pass when he spied
a big bear sitting on his haunches on the hill
side above. The trapper shouted and waved
his cap; whereupon, to his amazement, the
bear uttered a loud "wough" and charged
straight down on him — only to fall a victim
to misplaced boldness.

I am even inclined to think that there have
been wholly exceptional occasions when a
grisly has attacked a man with the deliberate
purpose of making a meal of him; when, in
other words, it has started on the career of a
man-eater. At least, on any other theory I
find it difficult to account for an attack which
once came to my knowledge. I was at Sand
Point, on Fend d'Oreille Lake, and met some
French and Meti trappers, then in town with
their bales of beaver, otter, and sable. One
of them, who gave his name as Baptiste La-
moche, had his head twisted over to one side,
the result of the bite of a bear. When the
accident occurred he was out on a trapping
trip with two companions. They had pitched
camp right on the shore of a cove in a little

136 Hunting the Grisly

lake, and his comrades were off fishing in a
dugout or pirogue. He himself was sitting
near the shore, by a little lean-to, watching
some beaver meat which was sizzling over the
dying embers. Suddenly, and without warn
ing, a great bear, which had crept silently up
beneath the shadows of the tall evergreens,
rushed at him, with a guttural roar, and seized
him before he could rise to his feet. It
grasped him with its jaws at the junction of
the neck and shoulder, making the teeth meet
through bone, sinew, and muscle; and turn
ing, tracked off toward the forest, dragging
with it the helpless and paralyzed victim.
Luckily the two men in the canoe had just
paddled round the point, in sight of, and
close to, camp. The man in the bow, seeing
the plight of their comrade, seized his rifle
and fired at the bear. The bullet went through
the beast's lungs, and it forthwith dropped
its prey, and running off some two hun
dred yards, lay down on its side and died.
The rescued man recovered full health and
strength, but never again carried his head
straight.

Old hunters and mountain men tell many
stories, not only of malicious grislies thus at
tacking men in camp, but also of their even

Hunting the Grisly 137

dogging the footsteps of some solitary hunter
and killing him when the favorable oppor
tunity occurs. Most of these tales are mere
fables; but it is possible that in altogether
exceptional instances they rest on a founda
tion of fact. One old hunter whom I knew
told me such a story. He was a truthful old
fellow, and there was no doubt that he be
lieved what he said, and that his companion
was actually killed by a bear; but it is prob
able that he was mistaken in reading the signs
of his comrade's fate, and that the latter was
not dogged by the bear at all, but stumbled
on him and was slain in the surprise of the
moment

At any rate, cases of wanton assaults by
grislies are altogether out of the common.
The ordinary hunter may live out his whole
life in the wilderness and never know aught
of a bear attacking a man unprovoked; and
the great majority of bears are shot under
circumstances of no special excitement, as they
either make no fight at all, or, if they do fight,
are killed before there is any risk of their
doing damage. If surprised on the plains,
at some distance from timber or from badly
broken ground, it is no uncommon feat for
a single horseman to kill them with a revol-

ij 8 Hunting the Grisly

ver. Twice of late years it has been per
formed in the neighborhood of my ranch.
In both instances the men were not hunters
out after game, but simply cowboys, riding
over the range in early morning in pursu
ance of their ordinary duties among the cat
tle. I knew both men and have worked with
them on the round-up. Like most cowboys
they carried 44-calibre Colt revolvers, and
were accustomed to and fairly expert in their
use, and they were mounted on ordinary cow-
ponies — quick, wiry, plucky little beasts. In
one case the bear was seen from quite a dis
tance, lounging across a broad tableland.
The cowboy, by taking advantage of a wind
ing and rather shallow coulie, got quite close
to him. He then scrambled out of the coulie,
put spurs to his pony, and raced up to within
fifty yards of the astonished bear ere the lat
ter quite understood what it was that was
running at him through the gray dawn. He
made no attempt at fight, but ran at top speed
toward a clump of brush not far off at the
head of a creek. Before he could reach it,
however, the galloping horseman was along
side, and fired three shots into his broad back.
He did not turn, but ran on into the bushes
and then fell over and died.

Hunting the Grisly 139

In the other case the cowboy, a Texan, was
mounted on a good cutting pony, a spirited,
handy, agile little animal, but excitable, and
with a habit of dancing, which rendered it
difficult to shoot from its back. The man was
with the rourid-up wagon, and had been sent
off by himself to make a circle through some
low, barren buttes, where it was not thought
more than a few head of stock would be
found. On rounding the corner of a small
washout he almost ran over a bear which was
feeding on the carcass of a steer that had
died in an alkali hole. After a moment of
stunned surprise the bear hurled himself at
the intruder with furious impetuosity; while
the cowboy, wheeling his horse on its haunches
and dashing in the spurs, carried it just clear
of his assailant's headlong rush. After a few
springs he reined in and once more wheeled
half round, having drawn his revolver, only
to find the bear again charging and almost
on him. This time he fired into it, near the
joining of the neck and shoulder, the bullet
going downward into the chest hollow; and
again by a quick dash to one side he just
avoided the rush of the beast and the sweep
of its mighty forepaw. The bear then halted
for a minute, and he rode close by it at a

14° Hunting the Grisly

run, firing a couple of shots, which brought
on another resolute charge. The ground was
quite rugged and broken, but his pony was
as quick on its feet as a cat, and never stum
bled, even when going at full speed to avoid
the bear's first mad rushes. It speedily be
came so excited, however, as to render it al
most impossible for the rider to take aim.
Sometimes he would come up close to the
bear and wait for it to charge, which it would
do, first at a trot, or rather rack, and then at
a lumbering but swift gallop; and he would
fire one or two shots before being forced to
run. At other times, if the bear stood still
in a good place, he would run by it, firing
as he rode. He spent many cartridges, and
though most of them were wasted, occasion
ally a bullet went home. The bear fought
with the most savage courage, champing its
bloody jaws, roaring with rage, and looking
the very incarnation of evil fury. For some
minutes it made no effort to flee, either charg
ing or standing at bay. Then it began to
move slowly toward a patch of ash and wild
plums in the head of a coulie, some distance
off. Its pursuer rode after it, and when close
enough would push by it and fire, while the
bear would spin quickly round and charge as

Hunting the Grisly 141

fiercely as ever, thougri evidently beginning
to grow weak. At last, when still a couple
of hundred yards from cover, the man found
he had used up all his cartridges, and then
merely followed at a safe distance. The bear
no longer paid heed to him, but walked slow
ly forward, swaying its great head from side
to side, while the blood streamed from be
tween its half-opened jaws. On reaching the
cover he could tell by the waving of the bushes
that it walked to the middle and then halted.
A few minutes afterward some of the other
cowboys rode up, having been attracted by
the incessant firing. They surrounded the
thicket, firing and throwing stones into the
bushes. Finally, as nothing moved, they ven
tured in and found the indomitable grisly
warrior lying dead.

Cowboys delight in nothing so much as the
chance to show their skill as riders and
ropers; and they always try to ride down and
rope any wild animal they come across in
favorable ground and close enough up. If a
party of them meets a bear in the open they
have great fun; and the struggle between the
shouting, galloping rough-riders and their
shaggy quarry is full of wild excitement and
not unaccompanied by danger. The bear

142 Hunting the Grisly

often throws the noose from his head so rap
idly that it is a difficult matter to catch him ;
and his frequent charges scatter his tormentors
in every direction, while the horses become
wild with fright over the roaring, bristling
beast — for horses seem to dread a bear more
than any other animal. If the bear can not
reach cover, however, his fate is sealed.
Sooner or later, the noose tightens over one
leg, or perchance over the neck and forepaw,
and as the rope straightens with a "pluck,"
the horse braces itself desperately and the
bear tumbles over. Whether he regains his
feet or not the cowboy keeps the rope taut;
soon another noose tightens over a leg, and
the bear is speedily rendered helpless.

I have known of these feats being per
formed several times in northern Wyoming,
although never in the immediate neighbor
hood of my ranch. Mr, Archibald Roger's
cowhands have in this manner caught several
bears, on or near his ranch on the Gray Bull,
which flows into the Bighorn; and those of
Mr. .G. B. Grinnell have also occasionally
done so. Any set of moderately good ropers
and riders, who are accustomed to back one
another up and act together, can accomplish
the feat if they have smooth ground and

Hunting the Grisly 143

plenty of room. It is, however, indeed a feat
of skill and daring for a single man; and
yet I have known of more than one instance
in which it has been accomplished by some
reckless knight of the rope and the saddle.
One such occurred in 1887 on tfie Flathead
Reservation, the hero being a half-breed; and
another in 1890 at the mouth of the Bighorn,
where a cowboy roped, bound, and killed a
large bear single-handed.

My friend General "Red" Jackson, of
Bellemeade, in the pleasant mid-county of
Tennessee, once did a feat which casts into
the shade even the feats of the men of the
lariat. General Jackson, who afterward be
came one of the ablest and most renowned
of the Confederate cavalry leaders, was at the
time a young officer in the Mounted Rifle
Regiment, now known as the 3d United States
Cavalry. It was some years before the Civil
War, and the regiment was on duty in the
Southwest, then the debatable land of Co-
manche and Apache. While on a scout after
hostile Indians, the troops in their march
roused a large grisly which sped off across
the plain in front of them. Strict orders had
been issued against firing at game, because
of the nearness of the Indians. Young Jack-

144 Hunting the Grisly

son was a man of great strength", a keen
swordsman, who always kept the finest edge
on his blade, and he was on a swift and met
tled Kentucky horse, which luckily had but
one eye. Riding at full speed he soon over
took the quarry. As the horse hoofs sounded
nearer, the grim bear ceased its flight, and
whirling round stood at bay, raising itself on
its hind-legs and threatening its pursuer with
bared fangs and spread claws. Carefully rid
ing his horse so that its blind side should be
toward the monster, the cavalryman swept by
at a run, handling his steed with such daring
skill that he just cleared the blow of the
dreaded forepaw, while with one mighty
sabre stroke he cleft the bear's skull, slaying
the grinning beast as it stood upright.

N

CHAPTER V

THE COUGAR

O animal of the chase is so difficult to
kill by fair still-hunting as the cougar —
that beast of many names, known in the East
as panther and painter, in the West as moun
tain lion, in the Southwest as Mexican lion,
and in the southern continent as lion and
puma.

Without hounds its pursuit is so uncertain
that from the still-hunter's standpoint it hard
ly deserves to rank as game at all — though, by
the way, it is itself a more skilful still-hunter
than any human rival. It prefers to move
abroad by night or at dusk; and in the day
time usually lies hid in some cave or tangled
thicket where it is absolutely impossible even
to stumble on it by chance. It is a beast of
stealth and rapine, its great velvet paws
never make a sound, and it is always on the
watch whether for prey or for enemies, while
it rarely leaves shelter even when it thinks

VOL. III. (145) 7

146 Hunting the Grisly

itself safe. Its soft, leisurely movements and
uniformity of color make it difficult to dis
cover at best, and its extreme watchfulness
helps it; but it is the cougar's reluctance to
leave cover at any time, its habit of slinking
off through the brush, instead of running in
the open, when startled, and the way in which
it lies motionless in its lair even when a man
is within twenty yards, that render it so diffi
cult to still-hunt.

In fact it is next to impossible with any
hope of success regularly to hunt the cougar
without dogs or bait. Most cougars that are
killed by still-hunters are shot by accident
while the man is after other game. This has
been my own experience. Although not com
mon, cougars are found near my ranch, where
the ground is peculiarly favorable for the
solitary rifleman; and for ten years I have,
off and on, devoted a day or two to their pur
suit; but never successfully. One December
a large cougar took up his abode on a densely
wooded bottom two miles above the ranch
house. I did not discover his existence until
I went there one evening to kill a deer, and
found that he had driven all the deer off
the bottom, having killed several, as well as
a young heifer. Snow was falling at the time,

The Cougar 147

but the storm was evidently almost over; the
leaves were all off the trees and bushes; and
I felt that next 'day there would be such a
chance to follow the cougar as fate rarely
offered. In the morning by dawn I was at
the bottom, and speedily found his trail. Fol
lowing it I came across his bed, among some
cedars in a dark, steep gorge, where the
buttes bordered the bottom. He had evidently
just left it, and I followed his tracks all day.
But I never caught a glimpse of him, and late
in the afternoon I trudged wearily homeward.
When I went out next morning I found that
as soon as I abandoned the chase, my quarry,
according to the uncanny habit sometimes
displayed by his kind, coolly turned likewise,
and deliberately dogged my footsteps to with
in a mile of the ranch house; his round foot
prints being as clear as writing in the snow.

This was the best chance of the kind that
I ever ha'd; but again and again I have found
fresh signs of cougar, such as a lair which
they had just left, game they had killed, or
one of our venison caches which they had
robbed, and have hunte'd for them all day
without success. My failures were doubtless
'Hue in part to various shortcomings in hun
ter Vcraft on my own part; but equally with-

148 Hunting the Grisly

out doubt they were mainly due to the quarry's
wariness and its sneaking ways.

I have seen a wild cougar alive but twice,
and both times by chance. On one occasion
one of my men, Merrifield, and I surprised
one eating a skunk in a bullberry patch; and
by our own bungling frightened it away from
its unsavory repast without getting a shot.

On the other occasion luck befriended me.
I was with a pack train in the Rockies, and
one day, feeling lazy, and as we had no meat
in camp, I determined to try for deer by
lying in wait beside a recently traveled game
trail. The spot I chose was a steep, pine-
clad slope leading down to a little mountain
lake. I hid behind a breastwork of rotten
logs, with a few young evergreens in front —
an excellent ambush. A broad game trail
slanted down the hill directly past me. I
lay perfectly quiet for about an hour, listen
ing to the murmur of the pine forests, and the
occasional call of a jay or woodpecker, and
gazing eagerly along the trail in the waning
light of the late afternoon. Suddenly, with
out noise or warning of any kind, a cougar
stood in the trail before me. The unlooked-
for and unheralded approach of the beast was
fairly ghost-like. With its head lower than

The Cougar 149

its shoulders, and its long tail twitching, it
slouched down the path, treading as softly as
a kitten. I waited until it had passed and
then fired into the short ribs, the bullet rang
ing forward. Throwing its tail up in the air,
and giving a bound, the cougar galloped off
over a slight ridge.. But it did not go far;
within a hundred yards I found it stretched
on its side, its jaws still working convulsively.
The true way to hunt the cougar is to fol
low it with dogs. If the chase is conducted in
this fashion it is very exciting, and resem
bles on a larger scale the ordinary method of
hunting the wildcat or small lynx, as prac
ticed by the sport-loving planters of the
Southern States. With a very little training,
hounds readily and eagerly pursue the cou
gar, showing in this kind of chase none of
the fear and disgust they are so prone to ex
hibit when put on the trail of the certainly
no more dangerous wolf. The cougar, when
the hounds are on its track, at first runs, but
when hard-pressed takes to a tree, or possibly
comes to bay in thick cover. Its attention is
then so taken up with the hounds that it can
usually be approached and shot without much
difficulty; though some cougars break bay
when the hunters come near, and again make

150 Hunting the Grisly

off, when they can only be stopped by many
large and fierce hounds. Hounds are often
killed in these fights ; and if hungry a cougar
will pounce on any dog for food; yet, as I
have elsewhere related, I know of one in
stance in which a small pack of big, savage
hounds killed a cougar unassisted. General
Wade Hampton, who with horse and hound
has been the mightiest hunter America has
ever seen, informs me that he has killed with
his pack some sixteen cougars, during the
fifty years he has hunted in South Carolina
and Mississippi. I believe they were all killed
in the latter State. General Hampton's hunt
ing has been chiefly for bear and deer, though
his pack also follows the lynx and the gray
fox; and, of course, if good fortune throws
either a wolf or a cougar in his way it is
followed as the game of all others. All the
cougars he killed were either treed or brought
to bay in a canebrake by the hounds; and
they often handled the pack very roughly in
the death struggle. He found them much
more dangerous antagonists than the black
bear when assailed with the hunting knife, a
weapon of which he was very fond. How
ever, if his pack had held a few very large,
savage dogs, put in purely for fighting when

The Cougar 151

the quarry was at bay, I think the danger
would have been minimized.

General Hampton followed his game on
horseback; but in following the cougar with
dogs this is by no means always necessary.
Thus Colonel Cecil Clay, of Washington,
killed a cougar in West Virginia, on foot with
only three or four hounds. The dogs took
the cold trail, and he had to run many miles
over the rough, forest-clad mountains after
them. Finally they drove the cougar up a
tree; where he found it, standing among the
branches, in a half-erect position, its hind-
feet on one limb and its fore-feet on another,
while it glared down at the dogs, and switched
its tail from side to side. He shot it through
both shoulders, and down it came in a heap,
whereupon the dogs jumped in and worried
it, for its fore-legs were useless, though it
managed to catch one dog in its jaws and
bite him severely.

A wholly exceptional instance of the kind
was related to me by my old hunting friend
Willis. In his youth, in southwest Missouri,
he knew a half-witted "poor white" who was
very fond of hunting coons. He hunted at
night, armed with an axe, and accompanied
by his dog Penny, a large, savage, half-

152 Hunting the Grisly

starved cur. One 'dark night the dog treed
an animal which he could not see; so he cut
down the tree, and immediately Penny jumped
in and grabbed the beast. The man sung out
"Hold on, Penny," seeing that the dog had
seized some large, wild animal; the next mo
ment the brute knocked the dog endways,
and at the same instant the man split open its
head with the axe. Great was his astonish
ment, and greater still the astonishment of
the neighbors next day, when it was found
that he had actually killed a cougar. These
great cats often take to trees in a perfectly
foolish manner. My friend, the hunter
Woody, in all his thirty years' experience in
the wilds never killed but one cougar. He
was lying out in camp writh two dogs at the
time ; it was about midnight, the fire was out,
and the night was pitch-black. He was
roused by the furious barking of his two dogs,
who had charged into the gloom, and were
apparently baying at something in a tree close
by. He kindled the fire, and to his astonish
ment found the thing in the tree to be a
cougar. Coming close underneath he shot it
with his revolver; thereupon it leaped down,
ran some forty yards, and climbed up another
tree, where it died among the branches.

The Cougar 153

If cowboys come across a cougar in open
ground they invariably chase and try to rope
it — as indeed they do with any wild animal.
I have known several instances of cougars
being roped in this way; in one the animal
was brought into camp alive by two strap
ping cowpunchers.

The cougar sometimes stalks its prey, and
sometimes lies in wait for it beside a game-
trail or drinking pool — very rarely indeed
does it crouch on the limb of a tree. When
excited by the presence of game it is some
times very bold. Willis once fired at some
big-horn sheep, on a steep mountain-side; he
missed, and immediately after his shot a
cougar made a dash into the midst of the
flying band, hoping to secure a victim. The
cougar roams over long distances, and often
changes its hunting ground, perhaps remain
ing in one place two or three months, until
the game is exhausted, and then shifting to
another. When it does not lie in wait it
usually spends most of the night, winter and
summer, in prowling restlessly around the
places where it thinks it may come across
pr:y, and it will patiently follow an animal's
trail. There is no kind of game, save the
full-grown grisly and buffalo, which it does

154 Hunting the Grisly

not at times assail and master. It readily
snaps up grisly cubs or buffalo calves; and in
at least one instance, I have known of it
springing on, slaying, and eating a full-grown
wolf. I presume the latter was taken by
surprise. On the other hand, the cougar it
self has to fear the big timber wolves when
maddened by the winter hunger and gath
ered in small parties; while a large grisly
would of course be an overmatch for it twice
over, though its superior agility puts it be
yond the grisly's power to harm it, unless by
some unlucky chance taken in a cave. Nor
could a cougar overcome a bull moose, or a
bull elk either, if the latter's horns were
grown, save by taking it unawares. lBy choice,
with such big game, its victims are the cows
and young. The prong-horn rarely comes
within reach of its spring; but it is the
dreaded enemy of big-horn, white goat, and
every kind of deer, while it also preys on all
the smaller beasts, such as foxes, coons, rab
bits, beavers, and even gophers, rats, and
mice. It sometimes makes a thorny meal of
the porcupine, and if sufficiently hungry at
tacks and eats its smaller cousin the lynx.
It is not a brave animal; nor does it run its
prey down in open chase. It always makes

The Cougar 155

Its attacks by stealth, and if possible from
behind, and relies on two or three tremen
dous springs to bring it on the doomed crea
ture's back. It uses its claws as well as its
teeth in holding and killing the prey. If
possible it always seizes a large animal by the
throat, whereas the wolf's point of attack is
more often the haunch or flank. Small deer
or sheep it will often knock over and kill,
merely using its big paws; sometimes it
breaks their necks. It has a small head com
pared to the jaguar, and its bite is much less
dangerous. Hence, as compared to its larger
and bolder relative, it places more trust in
its claws and less in its teeth.

Though the cougar prefers woodland, it is
not necessarily a beast of the dense forests
only; for it is found in all the plains country,
living in the scanty timber belts which fringe
the streams, or among the patches of brush in
the Bad Lands. The persecution of hunters,
however, always tends to drive it into the most
thickly wooded and broken fastnesses of the
mountains. The she has from one to three
kittens, brought forth in a cave or a secluded
lair, under a dead log or in very thick brush.
It is said that the old hes kill the small male
kittens when they get a chance. They cer-

156 Hunting the Grisly

tainly at times during the breeding season
fight desperately among themselves. Can-
gars are very solitary beasts; it is rare to see
more than one at a time, and then only a
mother and young, or a mated male and fe
male. iWhile she has kittens, the mother is
doubly destructive to game. The young be
gin to kill for themselves very early. The
first fall, after they are born, they attack large
game, and from ignorance are bolder in mak
ing their attacks than their parents; but they
are clumsy and often let the prey escape.
Like all cats, cougars are comparatively easy
to trap, much more so than beasts of the dog
kind, such as the fox and wolf.

They are silent animals; but old hunters
say that at mating time the males call loudly,
while the females have a very distinct answer.
They are also sometimes noisy at other seasons.
I am not sure that I ever heard one; but one
night, while camped in a heavily timbered
coulie near Kildeer Mountains, where, as
their footprints showed, the beasts were plen
tiful, I twice heard a loud, wailing scream
ringing through the impenetrable gloom
which shrouded the hills around us. My
companion, an old plainsman, said that this
was the cry of the cougar prowling for its

The Cougar 157

prey. Certainly no man could well listen
to a stranger and wilder sound.

Ordinarily the rifleman is in no danger from
a hunted cougar; the beast's one idea seems
to be flight, and even if its assailant is very
close, it rarely charges if there is any chance
for escape. Yet there are occasions when it
will show fight. In the spring of 1890, a
man with whom I had more than once worked
on the round-up — though I never knew his
name — was badly mauled by a cougar near
my ranch. He was hunting with a compan
ion and they unexpectedly came on the cou
gar on a shelf of sandstone above their heads,
only some ten feet off. It sprang down on the
man, mangled him with teeth and claws for a
moment, and then ran away. Another man I
knew, a hunter named Ed. Smith, who had
a small ranch near Helena, was once charged
by a wounded cougar; he received a couple
of deep scratches, but was not seriously hurt.

Many old frontiersmen tell tales of the cou
gar's occasionally itself making the attack,
and dogging to his death some unfortunate
wayfarer. Many others laugh such' tales to
scorn. It is certain that if such attacks occur
they are altogether exceptional, being in
deed of such extreme rarity that they may be

158 Hunting the Grisly

entirely disregarded in practice. I should
have no more hesitation in sleeping out in a
wood where there were cougars, or walking
through it after nightfall, than I should have
if the cougars were tomcats.

Yet it is foolish to deny that in exceptional
instances attacks may occur. Cougars vary
wonderfully in size, and no less in temper.
Indeed I think that by nature they are as
ferocious and bloodthirsty as they are cow
ardly; and that their habit of sometimes dog
ging wayfarers for miles is due to a desire
for bloodshed which they lack the courage to
realize. In the old days, when all wild
beasts were less shy than at present, there was
more danger from the cougar; and this was
especially true in the dark canebrakes of some
of the Southern States, where the man a cou
gar was most likely to encounter was a nearly
naked and unarmed negro. General Hamp
ton tells me that near his Mississippi planta
tion, many years ago, a negro who was one
of a gang engaged in building a railroad
through low and wet ground was waylaid
and killed by a cougar late one night as he
was walking alone through the swamp.

I knew two men in Missoula who were once
attacked by cougars in a very curious man-

The Cougar 159

ner. It was in January, and they were walk
ing home through the snow after a hunt, each
carrying on his back the saddle, haunches,
and hide of a deer he had slain. Just at dusk,
as they were passing through a narrow ravine,
the man in front heard his partner utter a
sudden loud call for help. Turning, he was
dumfounded to see the man lying on his face
in the snow, with a cougar which had evi
dently just knocked him down standing over
him, grasping the deer meat; while another
cougar was galloping up to assist. Swinging
his rifle round he shot the first one in the
brain, and it dropped motionless, whereat the
second halted, wheeled, and bounded into
the woods. His companion was not in the
least hurt or even frightened. The cougars
were not full grown, but young of the year.
Now in this case I do not believe the beasts
had any real intention of attacking the men.
They were young animals, bold, stupid, and
very hungry. The smell of the raw meat ex
cited them beyond control, and they probably
could not make out clearly what the men
were, as they walked bent under their bur
dens, with the deer skins on their backs. Evi
dently the cougars were only trying to get at
the venison.

160 Hunting the Grisly

In 1886 a cougar killed an Indian near
Flathead Lake. Two Indians were hunting
together on horseback when they came on the
cougar. It fell at once to their shots, and
they dismounted and ran toward it. Just as
they reached it it came to, and seized one,
killing him instantly with a couple of savage
bites in the throat and chest; it then raced
after the other, and, as he sprung on his horse,
struck him across the buttocks, inflicting a
deep but not dangerous scratch. I saw this
survivor a year later. He evinced great re
luctance to talk of the event, and insisted that
the thing which had slain his companion was
not really a cougar at all, but a devil.

A she-cougar does not often attempt to
avenge the loss of her young, but sometimes
she does. A remarkable instance of the kind
happened to my friend, Professor John Bach
McMaster, in 1875. He was camped near
the head of Green River, Wyoming. One
afternoon he found a couple of cougar kit
tens, and took them into camp; they were
clumsy, playful, friendly little creatures. The
next afternoon he remained in camp with the
cook. Happening to look up he suddenly
spied the mother cougar running noiselessly
down on them, her eyes glaring and tail

The Cougar 161

twitching. Snatching up his rifle, he killed
her when she was barely twenty yards dis
tant.

A ranchman, named Trescott, who was at
one time my neighbor, told me that while he
was living on a sheep-farm in the Argentine,
he found pumas very common, and killed
many. They were very destructive to sheep
and colts, but were singularly cowardly when
dealing with men. Not only did they never
attack human beings, under any stress of hun
ger, but they made no effective resistance
when brought to bay, merely scratching and
cuffing like a big cat; so that, if found in a
cave, it was safe to creep in and shoot them
with a revolver. Jaguars, on the contrary,
were very dangerous antagonists.

CHAPTER VI

A PECCARY HUNT ON THE NUECES

T N the United States the peccary is only
* found in the southernmost corner of Texas.
In April, 1892, I made a flying visit to the
ranch country of this region, starting from the
town of Uvalde with a Texan friend, Mr.
John Moore. My trip being very hurried,
I had but a couple of days to devote to hunt
ing.

Our first halting-place was at a ranch on
the Frio; a low, wooden building, of many
rooms, with open galleries between them, and
verandas round about. The country was in
some respects like, in others strangely unlike,
the northern plains with which I was so well
acquainted. It was for the most part cov
ered with a scattered growth of tough, stunted
mesquite trees, not dense enough to be called
a forest, and yet sufficiently close to cut off
the view. It was very dry, even as compared
with the northern plains. The bed of the
(162)

A Peccary Hunt on the Nueces 163

Frio was filled with coarse gravel, and for the
most part dry as a bone on the surface, the
water seeping through underneath, and only
appearing in occasional deep holes. These
deep holes or ponds never fail, even after a
year's drouth ; they were filled with fish. One
lay quite near the ranch house, under a bold
rocky bluff; at its edge grew giant cypress
trees. In the hollows and by the watercourses
were occasional groves of pecans, live-oaks,
and elms. Strange birds hopped among the
bushes; the chaparral cock — a big, handsome
ground-cuckoo of remarkable habits, much
given to preying on small snakes and lizards
— ran over the ground with extraordinary
rapidity. Beautiful swallow-tailed king-birds
with rosy plumage perched on the tops of the
small trees, and soared and flitted in graceful
curves above them. Blackbirds of many kinds
scuttled in flocks about the corrals and out
buildings around the ranches. Mocking
birds abounded, and were very noisy, singing
almost all the daytime, but with their usual
irritating inequality of performance, won
derfully musical and powerful snatches of
song being interspersed with imitations of
other bird notes and disagreeable squalling.
Throughout the trip I did not hear one of

164 Hunting the Grisly

them utter the beautiful love song in which
they sometimes indulge at night.

The country was all under wire fence, un
like the northern regions, the pastures, how
ever, being sometimes many miles across.
When we reached the Frio ranch a herd of
a thousand cattle had just been gathered, and
two or three hundred beeves and young stock
were being cut out to be driven northward
over the trail. The cattle were worked in
pens much more than in the North, and on all
the ranches there were chutes with steering
gates, by means of which the individuals of
a herd could be dexterously shifted into va
rious corrals. The branding of the calves
was done ordinarily in one of these corrals
and on foot, the calf being always roped by
both fore-legs; otherwise the work of the cow-
punchers was much like that of their brothers
in the North. As a whole, however, they
were distinctly more proficient with the rope,
and at least half of them were Mexicans.

There were some bands of wild cattle liv
ing only in the densest timber of the river
bottoms which were literally as wild as deer,
and moreover very fierce and dangerous. The
pursuit of these was exciting and hazardous
in the extreme. The men who took part in

A Peccary Hunt on the Nueces 165

it showed not only the utmost daring but the
most consummate horsemanship and wonder
ful skill in the use of the rope, the coil being
hurled with the force and precision of an iron
quoit; a single man speedily overtaking, rop
ing, throwing, and binding down the fiercest
steer or bull.

There had been many peccaries, or, as the
Mexicans and cowpunchers of the border
usually call them, javalinas, round this ranch
a few years before the date of my visit. Until
1886, or thereabout, these little wild hogs
were not much molested, and abounded in
the dense chaparral around the lower Rio
Grande. In that year, however, it was sud
denly discovered that their hides had a mar
ket value, being worth four bits — that is, half
a dollar — apiece; and many Mexicans and
not a few shiftless Texans went into the busi
ness of hunting them as a means of livelihood.
They were more easily killed than deer, and,
as a result, they were speedily exterminated
in many localities where they had formerly
been numerous, and even where they were
left were to be found only in greatly dimin
ished numbers. On this particular Frio
ranch the last little band had been killed
nearly a year before. There were three of

1 66 Hunting the Grisly

them, a boar and two sows, and a couple of
the cowboys stumbled on them early one
morning while out with a dog. After half a
mile's chase the three peccaries ran into a
hollow pecan tree, and one of the cowboys,
dismounting, improvised a lance by tying
his knife to the end of a pole, and killed
them all.

Many anecdotes were related to me of what
they had done in the old days when they were
plentiful on the ranch. They were then usu
ally found in parties of from twenty to thirty,
feeding in the dense chaparral, the sows re
joining the herd with the young very soon
after the birth of the latter, each sow usually
having but one or two at a litter. At night
they sometimes lay in the thickest cover, but
always, where possible, preferred to house in
a cave or big hollow log, one invariably re
maining as a sentinel close to the mouth, look
ing out. If this sentinel were shot, another
would almost certainly take his place. They
were subject to freaks of stupidity, and were
pugnacious to a degree. Not only would they
fight if molested, but they would often attack
entirely without provocation.

Once my friend Moore himself, while out
with another cowboy on horseback, was at-

A Peccary Hunt on the Nueces 167

tacked in sheer wantonness by a drove of these
little wild hogs. The two men were riding
by a grove of live-oaks along a wood-cutter's
cart track, and were assailed without a mo
ment's warning. The little creatures com
pletely surrounded them, cutting fiercely at
the horses' legs and jumping up at the riders'
feet. The men, drawing their revolvers, dashed
through and were closely followed by their
pursuers for three or four hundred yards, al
though they fired right and left with good
effect. Both of the horses were badly cut. On
another occasion the bookkeeper of the ranch
walked off to a water hole but a quarter of
a mile distant, and came face to face with a
peccary on a cattle trail, where the brush was
thick. Instead of getting out of his way the
creature charged him instantly, drove him
up a small mesquite tree, and kept him there
for nearly two hours, looking up at him and
champing its tusks.

I spent two days hunting round this ranch
but saw no peccary sign whatever, although
deer were quite plentiful. Parties of wild
geese and sandhill cranes occasionally flew
overhead. At nightfall the poor-wills wailed
everywhere through the woods, and coyotes
yelped and yelled, while in the early morning

1 68 Hunting the Grisly

the wild turkeys gobble'd loudly from their
roosts in the tops of the pecan trees.

Having satisfied myself that there were no
javalinas left on the Frio ranch, and being
nearly at the end of my holiday, I was about
to abandon the effort to get any, when a pass
ing cowman happened to mention the fact
that some were still to be found on the Nueces
River thirty miles or thereabout to the south
ward. Thither I determined to go, and next
morning Moore and I started in a buggy
drawn by a redoubtable horse, named Jim
Swinger, which we were allowed to use be
cause he bucked so under the saddle that no
body on the ranch could ride him. We drove
six or seven hours across the dry, waterless
plains. There had been a heavy frost a few
days before, which had blackened the budding
mesquite trees, and their twigs still showed
no signs of sprouting. Occasionally we came
across open spaces where there was nothing
but short brown grass. In most places, how
ever, the leafless, sprawling mesquites were
scattered rather thinly over the ground, cut
ting off an extensive view and merely adding
to the melancholy barrenness of the landscape.
The road was nothing but a couple of dusty
wheel-tracks; the ground was parched, and

A Peccary Hunt on the Nueces 169

the grass cropped close by the gaunt, starved
cattle. As we drove along buzzards and great
hawks occasionally soared overhead. Now
and then we passed lines of wild-looking,
long-horned steers, and once we came on the
grazing horses of a cow-outfit, just preparing
to start northward over the trail to the fatten
ing pastures. Occasionally we encountered
one or two cowpunchers ; either Texans, hab
ited exactly like their brethren in the North,
with broad-brimmed gray hats, blue shirts,
silk neckerchiefs, and leather leggings; or
else- Mexicans, more gaudily dressed, and
wearing peculiarly stiff, very broad-brimmed
hats, with conical tops.

Toward the end of our ride we got where
the ground was more fertile, and there had
recently been a sprinkling of rain. Here we
came across wonderful flower prairies. In
one spot I kept catching glimpses through the
mesquite trees of lilac stretches which I had
first thought must be ponds of water. On
coming nearer they proved to be acres on
acres thickly covered with beautiful lilac-
colored flowers. Further on we came to
where broad bands of red flowers covered the
ground for many furlongs; then their places
were taken by yellow blossoms, elsewhere by

VOL. III. 8

1 70 Hunting the Grisly

white. Generally each band or patch of
ground was covered densely by flowers of the
same color, making a great vivid streak across
the landscape; but in places they were mixed
together, red, yellow, and purple, interspersed
in patches and curving bands, carpeting the
prairie in a strange, bright pattern.

Finally toward evening we reached the
Nueces. Where we struck it first the bed was
dry, except in occasional deep, malarial-look
ing pools, but a short distance below there be
gan to be a running current. Great blue
herons were stalking beside these pools, and
from one we flushed a white ibis. In the woods
were reddish cardinal birds, much less bril
liant in plumage than the true cardinals and
the scarlet tanagers; and yellow-headed tit
mice which had already built large domed
nests.

In the valley of the Nueces itself, the brush
grew thick. There were great groves of pe
can trees, and evergreen live-oaks stood in
many places, long, wind-shaken tufts of gray
moss hanging from their limbs. Many of the
trees in the wet spots were of giant size, and
the whole landscape was semi-tropical in
character. High on a bluff shoulder over
looking the course of the river was perched

A Peccary Hunt on the Nueces 171

the ranch house, toward which we were bend
ing our steps ; and here we were received with
the hearty hospitality characteristic of the
ranch country everywhere.

The son of the ranchman, a tall, well-built
young fellow, told me at once that there were
peccaries in the neighborhood, and that he
had himself shot one but two or three days
before, and volunteered to lend us horses and
pilot us to the game on the morrow, with the
help of his two dogs. The last were big black
curs with, as we were assured, "considerable
hound" in them. One was at the time stay
ing at the ranch house, the other was four or
five miles off with a Mexican goat-herder,
and it was arranged that early in the morn
ing we should ride down to the latter place,
taking the first dog with us and procuring his
companion when we reached the goat-herder's
house.

We started after breakfast, riding powerful
cow-ponies, well trained to gallop at full speed
through the dense chaparral. The big black
hound slouched at our heels. We rode down
the banks of the Nueces, crossing and recross-
ing the stream. Here and there were long,
deep pools in the bed of the river, where
rushes and lilies grew and huge mailed gar-

172 Hunting the Grisly

fish swam slowly just beneath the surface of
the water. Once my two companions stopped
to pull a mired cow out of a slough, hauling
with ropes from their saddle horns. In places
there were half-dry pools, out of the regular
current of the river, the water green and fe
tid. The trees were very tall and large. The
streamers of pale gray moss hung thickly
from the branches of the live-oaks, and when
many trees thus draped stood close together
they bore a strangely mournful and desolate
look.

We finally found the queer little hut of the
Mexican goat-herder in the midst of a grove
of giant pecans. On the walls were nailed
the skins of different beasts, raccoons, wild
cats, and the tree-civet, with its ringed tail.
The Mexican's brown wife and children were
in the hut, but the man himself and the goats
were off in the forest, and it took us three or
four hours' search before we found him.
Then it was nearly noon, and we lunched in
his hut, a square building of split logs, with
bare earth floor, and roof of clap-boards arid
bark. Our lunch consisted of goat's meat
and pan de mats. The Mexican, a broad-
chested man with a stolid Indian face, was
evidently quite a sportsman, and had two or

A Peccary Hunt on the Nueces 173

three half-starved hounds, besides the funny,
hairless little house dogs, of which Mexicans
seem so fond.

Having borrowed the javalina hound of
which we were in search, we rode off in quest
of our game, the two dogs trotting gayly
ahead. The one which had been living at
the ranch had evidently fared well, and wras
very fat; the other was little else but skin and
bone, but as alert and knowing as any New
York street-boy, with the same air of disrepu
table capacity. It was this hound which al
ways did most in finding the javalinas and
bringing them to bay, his companion's chief
use being to make a noise and lend the moral
support of his presence.

We rode away from the river on the 'dry
uplands, where the timber, though thick, was
small, consisting almost exclusively of the
thorny mesquites. Mixed among them were
prickly pears, standing as high as our heads
on horseback, and Spanish bayonets, looking
in the distance like small palms; and there
were many other kinds of cactus, all with
poisonous thorns. Two or three times the
rdogs got on an old trail and rushed off giving
tongue, whereat we galloped madly after them,
ducking and dodging through and among

174 Hunting the Grisly

the clusters of spine-bearing trees and cactus,
not without getting a considerable number of
thorns in our hands and legs. It was very
dry and hot. Where the javalinas live in
droves in the river bottoms they often drink
at the pools; but when some distance from
water they seem to live quite comfortably on
the prickly pear, slaking their thirst by eating
its hard, juicy fibre.

At last, after several false alarms, and gal
lops which led to nothing, when it lacked but
an hour of sundown we struck a band of five
of the little wild hogs. They were running
off through the mesquites with a peculiar
hopping or bounding motion, and we all, dogs
and men, tore after them instantly.

Peccaries are very fast for a few hundred
yards, but speedily tire, lose their wind, and
come to bay. Almost immediately one of
these, a sow, as it turned out, wheeled and
charged at Moore as he passed, Moore never
seeing her but keeping on after another. The
sow then stopped and stood still, chattering
her teeth savagely, and I jumped off my horse
and dropped her dead with a shot in the spine
over the shoulders. Moore meanwhile had
dashed off after his pig in one direction, and
killed the little beast with a shot from the

A Peccary Hunt on the Nueces 175

saddle when it had come to bay, turning and
going straight at him. Two of the peccaries
got off; the remaining one, a rather large boar,
was followed by the two dogs, and as soon
as I had killed the sow I leaped again on my
horse and made after them, guided by the
yelping and baying. In less than a quarter of
a mile they were on his haunches, and he
wheeled and stood under a bush, charging at
them when they came near him, and once
catching one, inflicting an ugly cut. All the
while his teeth kept going like castanets, with
a rapid champing sound. I ran up close and
killed him by a shot through the backbone
where it joined the neck. His tusks were fine.
The few minutes' chase on horseback was
great fun, and there was a certain excitement
in seeing the fierce little creatures come to
bay; but the true way to kill these peccaries
would be with the spear. They could often
be speared on horseback, and where this was
impossible, by using dogs to bring them to bay
they could readily be killed on foot; though,
as they are very active, absolutely fearless,
and inflict a most formidable bite, it would
usually be safest to have two men go at one
together. Peccaries are not difficult beasts
to kill, because their short wind and their

176 Hunting the Grisly

pugnacity make them come to bay before
hounds so quickly. [Two or three good dogs
can bring to a halt a herd of considerable size.
They then all stand in a bunch, or else with
their sterns against a bank, chattering their
teeth at their antagonists. When angry and
at bay, they get their legs close together, their
shoulders high, and their bristles all ruffled
and look the very incarnation of anger, and
they fight with reckless indifference to the
very last. Hunters usually treat them with
a certain amount of caution; but, as a matter
of fact, I know of but one case where a man
was hurt by them. He had shot at and
wounded one, was charged both by it and by
its two companions, and started to climb a
tree; but as he drew himself from the ground,
one sprang at him and bit him through the
calf, inflicting a very severe wound. I have
known of several cases of horses being cut,
however, and dogs are very commonly killed.
Indeed, a dog new to the business is almost
certain to get very badly scarred, and no dog
that hunts steadily can escape without some
injury. If it runs in right at the heads of the
animals, the probabilities are that it will get
killed; and, as a rule, even two good-sized
hounds can not kill a peccary, though it is no

A Peccary Hunt on the Nueces 177

larger than either of them. However, a wary,
resolute, hard-biting dog of good size speedily
gets accustomed to the chase, and can kill a
peccary single-handed, seizing it from behind
and worrying it to death, or watching its
chance and grabbing it by the back of the neck
where it joins the head.

Peccaries have delicately molded short legs,
and their feet are small, the tracks looking
peculiarly dainty in consequence. Hence,
they do not swim well, though they take to
the water if necessary. They feed on roots,
prickly pears, nuts, insects, lizards, etc. They
usually keep entirely separate from the droves
of half-wild swine that are so often found in
the same neighborhoods; but in one case, on
this very ranch where I was staying, a peccary
deliberately joined a party of nine pigs and
associated with them. When the owner of
the pigs came up to them one day the peccary
manifested great suspicion at his presence,
and finally sidled close up and threatened to
attack him, so that he had to shoot it. The
ranchman's son told me that he had never but
once had a peccary assail him unprovoked,
and even in this case it was his dog that was
the object of attack, the peccary rushing out
at it as it followed him home one evening

178 Hunting the Grisly

through the chaparral. Even around this
ranch the peccaries had very greatly decreased
in numbers, and the survivors were learning
some caution. In the old days it had been no
uncommon thing for a big band to attack, en
tirely of their own accord, and keep a hunter
up a tree for hours at a time.

CHAPTER VII

HUNTING WITH HOUNDS

IN hunting American big game with hounds,
several entirely distinct methods are pur
sued. The true wilderness hunters, the men
who in the early days lived alone in, or moved
in parties through, the Indian-haunted soli
tudes, like their successors of to-day, rarely
made use of a pack of hounds, and, as a rule,
did not use dogs at all. In the Eastern for
ests occasionally an old-time hunter would
own one or two track-hounds, slow, with a
good nose, intelligent and obedient, of use
mainly in following wounded game. Some
Rocky Mountain hunters nowadays employ
the same kind of a dog, but the old-time trap
pers of the great plains and the Rockies led
such wandering lives of peril and hardship
that they could not readily take dogs with
them. The hunters of the Alleghanies and
the Adirondacks have, however, always used
hounds to drive deer, killing the animal in
the water or at a runway.

(179)

i8o Hunting the Grisly

As soon, however, as the old wilderness
hunter type passes away, hounds come into
use among his successors, the rough border
settlers of the backwoods and the plains.
Every such settler is apt to have four or five
large mongrel dogs with hound blood in them,
which serve to drive off beasts of prey from
the sheepfold and cattle-shed, and are also
used, when the occasion suits, in regular hunt
ing, whether after bear or deer.

Many of the Southern planters have always
kept packs of fox-hounds, which are used in
the chase, not only of the gray and the red fox,
but also of the deer, the black bear, and the
wildcat. The fox the dogs themselves run
down and kill, but as a rule in this kind of
hunting, when after deer, bear, or even wild
cat, the hunters carry guns with them on their
horses, and endeavor either to get a shot at
the fleeing animal by hard and dexterous rid
ing, or else to kill the cat when treed, or the
bear when it comes to bay. Such hunting is
great sport.

Killing driven game by lying in wait for it
to pass is the very poorest kind of sport that
can be called legitimate. This is the way
the deer is usually killed with hounds in the
East. In the North the red fox is often killed

Hunting with Hounds 181

in somewhat the same manner, being followed
by a slow hound and shot at as he circles be
fore the dog. Although this kind of fox-hunt
ing is inferior to hunting on horseback, it
nevertheless has its merits, as the man must
walk and run well, shoot with some accuracy,
and show considerable knowledge both of the
country and of the habits of the game.

During the last score of years an entirely
different type of dog from the fox-hound has
firmly established itself in the field of Ameri
can sport. This is the greyhound, whether
the smooth-haired, or the rough-coated Scotch
deer-hound. For half a century the army
officers posted in the far West have occasion
ally had greyhounds with them, using the dogs
to course jack-rabbit, coyote, and sometimes
deer, antelope, and gray wolf. Many of them
were devoted to this sport, — General Custer,
for instance. I have myself hunted with many
of the descendants of Custer's hounds. In
the early yo's the ranchmen of the great plains
themselves began to keep greyhounds for
coursing (as indeed they had already been
used for a considerable time in California,
after the Pacific Coast jack- rabbit), and the
sport speedily assumed large proportions and
a permanent form. Nowadays the ranchmen

1 82 Hunting the Grisly

of the cattle country not only use their grey
hounds after the jack-rabbit, but also after
every other kind of game animal to be found
there, the antelope and coyote being especial
favorites. Many ranchmen soon grew to own
fine packs, coursing being the sport of all
sports for the plains. In Texas the wild tur
key was frequently an object of the chase, and
wherever the locality enabled deer to be fol
lowed in the open, as, for instance, in the In
dian territory, and in many places in the
neighborhood of the large plains rivers, the
whitetail was a favorite quarry, the hunters
striving to surprise it in the early morning
when feeding on the prairie.

I have myself generally coursed with scratch
packs, including perhaps a couple of grey
hounds, a wire-haired deer-hound, and two or
three long-legged mongrels. However, we
generally had at least one very fast and sav
age dog — a strike dog — in each pack, and the
others were of assistance in turning the game,
sometimes in tiring it, and usually in helping
to finish it at the worry. With such packs I
have had many a wildly exciting ride over
the great grassy plains lying near the Little
Missouri and the Knife and Heart Rivers.
Usually our proceedings on such a hunt were

Hunting with Hounds 183

perfectly simple. We started on horseback
and when reaching favorable ground beat
across it in a long scattered line of men and
dogs. Anything that we put up, from a fox
to a coyote or a prong-buck, was fair game,
and was instantly followed at full speed. The
animals we most frequently killed were jack-
rabbits. They always gave good runs, though
like other game they differed much individu
ally in speed. The foxes did not run so well,
and whether they were the little swift, or the
big red prairie fox, they were speedily snapped
up if the dogs had a fair showing. Once
our dogs roused a blacktail buck close up
out of a brush coulie where the ground was
moderately smooth, and after a headlong chase
of a mile they ran into him, threw him and
killed him before he could rise. (His stiff-
legged bounds sent him along at a tremen
dous pace at first, but he seemed to tire rather
easily.) On two or three occasions we killed
whitetail deer, and several times antelope.
Usually, however, the antelopes escaped.
The bucks sometimes made a good fight, but
generally they were seized while running,
some dogs catching by the throat, others by
the shoulders, and others again by the flank
just in front of the hind-leg. Wherever the

184 Hunting the Grisly

hold was obtained, if the dog made his spring
cleverly, the buck was sure to come down
with a crash, and if the other dogs were any
where near he was probably killed before he
could rise, although not infrequently the dogs
themselves were more or less scratched in the
contests. Some greyhounds, even of high
breeding, proved absolutely useless from ti
midity, being afraid to take hold; but if they
got accustomed to the chase, being worked
with old dogs, and had any pluck at all, they
proved singularly fearless. A big ninety-
pound greyhound or Scotch deer-hound is a
very formidable fighting dog; I saw one whip
a big mastiff in short order, his wonderful
agility being of more account than his ad
versary's superior weight.

The proper way to course, however, is to
take the dogs out in a wagon and drive them
thus until the game is seen. This prevents
their being tired out. In my own hunting,
most of the antelope aroused got away, the
dogs being jaded when the chase began. But
really fine greyhounds, accustomed to work
together and to hunt this species of game, will
usually render a good account of a prong-
buck if two or three are slipped at once, fresh,
and within a moderate distance.

'Hunting with Hounds 185

Although most Westerners take more kindly
to the rifle, now and then one is found who is
a devotee of the hound. Such a one was an
old Missourian, who may be called Mr. Cow-
ley, whom I knew when he was living on a
ranch in North Dakota, west of the Missouri.
Mr. Cowley was a primitive person, of much
nerve, which he showed not only in the hunt
ing field but in the startling political conven
tions of the place and period. He was quite
well off, but he was above the niceties of per
sonal vanity. His hunting garb was that in
which he also paid his rare formal calls — calls
throughout which he always preserved the
gravity of an Indian, though having a discon
certing way of suddenly tip-toeing across the
room to some unfamiliar object, such as a pea
cock screen or a vase, feeling it gently with one
forefinger, and returning with noiseless gait
to his chair, unmoved and making no comment.
On the morning of a hunt he would always ap
pear on a stout horse, clad in a long linen
'duster, a huge club in his hand, and his trousers
working half-way up his legs. He hunted
everything on all possible occasions; and he
never under any circumstances shot an animal
that the 'dogs could kill. When a skunk got
into his house, with the direful stupidity of its

1 86 Hunting the Grisly

perverse kind, he turned the hounds on it; a
manifestation of sporting spirit which aroused
the ire of even his long-suffering wife. As
for his dogs, provided they could run and
fight, he cared no more for their looks than
for his own; he preferred the animal to be
half greyhound, but the other half could be
fox-hound, collie, or setter, it mattered noth
ing to him. They were a wicked, hard-biting
crew for all that, and Mr. Cowley, in his flap
ping linen duster, was a first-class hunter and
a good rider. He went almost mad with ex
citement in every chase. His pack usually
hunted coyote, fox, jack-rabbit, and deer; and
I have had more than one good run with it.

My own experience is too limited to allow
me to pass judgment with certainty as to the
relative speed of the different beasts of the
chase, especially as there is so much individual
variation. I consider the antelope the fleetest
of all, however; and in this opinion I am
sustained by Colonel Roger D. Williams, of
Lexington, Kentucky, who, more than any
other American, is entitled to speak upon
coursing, and especially upon coursing large
game. Colonel Williams, like a true son of
Kentucky, has bred his own thoroughbred
horses and thoroughbred hounds for many

Hunting with Hounds 187

years ; and during a series of long hunting trips
extending over nearly a quarter of a century
he has tried his pack on almost every game
animal to be found among the foothills of the
Rockies and on the great plains. His dogs,
both smooth-haired greyhounds and rough-
coated deer-hounds, have been bred by him
for generations with a special view to the chase
of big game — not merely of hares; they are
large animals, excelling not only in speed but
in strength, endurance, and ferocious courage.
The survivors of his old pack are literally
seamed all over with the scars of innumerable
battles. When several dogs were together
they would stop a bull elk, and fearlessly as
sail a bear or cougar. This pack scored many
a triumph over blacktail, whitetail, and
prong-buck. For a few hundred yards the
deer were very fast; but in a run of any dura
tion the antelope showed much greater speed,
and gave the dogs far more trouble, although
always overtaken in the end, if a good start
had been obtained. Colonel Williams is a
firm believer in the power of the thorough
bred horse to outrun any animal that
breathes, in a long chase; he has not infre
quently run down deer, when they were
jumped some miles from cover; and on two

1 88 Hunting the Grisly

or three occasions he ran down uninjured an-
telope, but in each case only after a desperate
ride of miles, which in one instance resulted
in the death of his gallant horse.

This coursing on the prairie, especially
after big game, is an exceedingly manly and
attractive sport; the furious galloping, often
over rough ground with an occasional deep
washout or gully, the sight of the gallant
hounds running and tackling, and the ex
hilaration of the pure air and wild surround
ing, all combine to give it a peculiar zest.
But there is really less need of bold and skil
ful horsemanship than in the otherwise less
attractive and more artificial sport of fox
hunting, or riding to hounds, in a closed and
long-settled country.

Those of us who are in part of Southern
blood have a hereditary right to be fond of
cross-country riding; for our forefathers in
Virginia, Georgia, or the Carolinas, have for
six generations followed the fox with horse,
horn, and hound. In the long-settled North
ern States the sport has been less popular,
though much more so now than formerly; yet
it has always existed, here and there, and in
certain places has been followed quite steadily.

In no place in the Northeast is hunting the

Hunting with Hounds 189

wild red fox put on a more genuine and
healthy basis than in the Genesee Valley, in
central New York. There has always been
fox-hunting in this valley, the farmers having
good horses and being fond of sport; but it
was conducted in a very irregular, primitive
manner, until some twenty years ago Mr. Aus
tin Wadsworth turned his attention to it. He
has been master of fox-hounds ever since, and
no pack in the country has yielded better
sport than his, or has brought out harder rid
ers among the men and stronger jumpers
among the horses. Mr. Wadsworth began his
hunting by picking up some of the various
trencher-fed hounds of the neighborhood, the
hunting of that period being managed on the
principle of each farmer bringing to the meet
the hound or hounds he happened to possess,
and appearing on foot or horseback as his
fancy dictated. Having gotten together some
of these native hounds and started fox-hunting
in localities where the ground was so open as
to necessitate following the chase on horse
back, Mr. Wadsworth imported a number of
dogs from the best English kennels. He found
these to be much faster than the American
dogs and more accustomed to work together,
but less enduring, and without such good

190 Hunting the Grisly

noses. The American hounds were very ob
stinate and self-willed. Each wished to work
out the trail for himself. But once found,
they would puzzle it out, no matter how cold,
and would follow it if necessary for a day and
night. By a judicious crossing of the two Mr.
Wadsworth finally got his present fine pack,
which for its own particular work on its own
ground would be hard to beat. The country
ridden over is well wooded, and there are
many foxes. The abundance of cover, how
ever, naturally decreases the number of kills.
It is a very fertile land, and there are few
farming regions more beautiful, for it is pre
vented from being too tame in aspect by the
number of bold hills and deep ravines. Most
of the fences are high posts-and-rails or
"snake" fences, although there is an occa
sional stone wall, haha, or water-jump. The
steepness of the ravines and the density of
the timber make it necessary for a horse to
be sure-footed and able to scramble anywhere,
and the fences are so high that none but very
good jumpers can possibly follow the pack.
Most of the horses used are bred by the farm
ers in the neighborhood, or are from Canada,
and they usually have thoroughbred or trot-
ting-stock blood in them.

Hunting with Hounds 191

One of the pleasantest days I ever passed
in the saddle was after Mr. Wadsworth's
hounds. I was staying with him at the time,
in company with my friend Senator Cabot
Lodge, of Boston. The meet was about
twelve miles distant from the house. It was
only a small field of some twenty-five riders,
but there was not one who did not mean going.
I was mounted on a young horse, a powerful,
big-boned black, a great jumper, though per
haps a trifle hot-headed. Lodge was on a fine
bay, which could both run and jump. There
were two or three other New Yorkers and
Bostonians present, several men who had come
up from Buffalo for the run, a couple of re
tired army officers, a number of farmers from
the neighborhood; and finally several mem
bers of a noted local family of hard riders,
who formed a class by themselves, all having
taken naturally to every variety of horseman
ship from earliest infancy.

It was a thoroughly democratic assemblage ;
every one was there for sport, and nobody
cared an ounce how he or anybody else was
dressed. Slouch hats, brown coats, corduroy
breeches, and leggings, or boots, were the
order of the day. We cast off in a thick wood.
The dogs struck a trail almost immediately

192 Hunting the Grisly

and were off with clamorous yelping, while
the hunt thundered after them like a herd of
buffaloes. jWe went headlong down the hill
side into and across a brook. Here the trail
led straight up a sheer bank. Most of the
riders struck off to the left for an easier place,
which was unfortunate for them, for the eight
of us who went straight up the side (one man's
horse falling back with him) were the only
ones who kept on terms with the hounds. Al
most as soon as we got to the top of the bank
we came out of the woods over a low but
awkward rail fence, where one of our num
ber, who was riding a very excitable sorrel
colt, got a fall. This left but six, including
the whip. There were two or three large
fields with low fences; then we came to two
high, stiff doubles, the first real jumping of
the day, the fences being over four feet six,
and so close together that the horses barely
had a chance to gather themselves. We got
over, however, crossed two or three stump-
strewn fields, galloped through an open wood,
picked our way across a marshy spot, jumped
a small brook and two or three stiff fences,
and then came a check. Soon the hounds re
covered the line and swung off to the right,
back across four or five fields, so as to enable

Hunting with Hounds 193

the rest of the hunt, by making an angle, to
come up. Then we jumped over a very high
board fence into the main road, out of it
again, and on over plowed fields and grass
lands, separated by stiff snake fences. (The
run had been fast and the horses were be
ginning to tail. By the time we suddenly
rattled down into a deep ravine and scrambled
up the other side through thick timber there
were but four of us left, Lodge and myself
being two of the lucky ones. Beyond this ra
vine we came to one of the worst jumps of the
day, a fence out of the wood, wrhich was prac
ticable only at one spot, where a kind of cat
tle trail led up to a panel. It was within an
inch or two of five feet high. However, the
horses, thoroughly trained to timber jumping
and to rough and hard scrambling in awk
ward places, and by this time well quieted,
took the bars without mistake, each one in
turn trotting or cantering up to within a few
yards, then making a couple of springs and
bucking over with a great twist of the power
ful haunches. I may explain that there was
not a horse of the four that had not a record
of five feet six inches in the ring. We now
got into a perfect tangle of ravines, and the
fox went to earth ; and though we started one

VOL. III. Q

194 Hunting the Grisly

or two more in the course of the afternoon,
we did not get another really first-class run.

At Geneseo the conditions for the enjoy
ment of this sport are exceptionally favorable.
In the Northeast generally, although there
are now a number of well-established hunts,
at least nine out of ten runs are after a drag.
Most of the hunts are in the neighborhood of
great cities, and are mainly kept up by young
men who come from them. A few of these
are men of leisure, who can afford to devote
their whole time to pleasure; but much the
larger number are men in business, who work
hard and are obliged to make their sports ac
commodate themselves to their more serious
occupations. Once or twice a week they can
get off for an afternoon's ride across country,
and they then wish to be absolutely certain of
having their run, and of having it at the ap
pointed time; and the only way to ensure this
is to have a drag-hunt. It is not the lack of
foxes that has made the sport so commonly
take the form of riding to drag-hounds, but
rather the fact that the majority of those who
keep it up are hard-working business men who
wish to make the most out of every moment
of the little time they can spare from their
regular occupations. A single ride across

Hunting with Hounds 195

country, or an afternoon at polo, will yield
more exercise, fun, and excitement than can
be got out of a week's decorous and dull rid
ing in the park, and many young fellows have
waked up to this fact.

At one time I did a good deal of hunting
with the Meadowbrook hounds, in the north
ern part of Long Island. There were plenty
of foxes around us, both red and gray, but
partly for the reasons given above, and partly
because the covers were so large and so nearly
continuous, they were not often hunted, al
though an effort was always made to have one
run every week or so after a wild fox, in order
to give a chance for the hounds to be properly
worked and to prevent the runs from becom
ing a mere succession of steeple-chases. The
sport was mainly drag-hunting, and was most
exciting, as the fences were high and the pace
fast. The Long Island country needs a pecu
liar style of horse, the first requisite being
that he shall be a very good and high timber
jumper. Quite a number of crack English
and Irish hunters have at different times been
imported, and some of them have turned out
pretty well; but when they first come over
they are utterly unable to cross our country,
blundering badly at the high timber. Few of

196 Hunting the Grisly

them have done as well as the American
horses. I have hunted half a dozen times in
England, with the Pytchely, Essex, and North
Warwickshire, and it seems to me probable
that English thoroughbreds, in a grass coun
try, and over the peculiar kinds of obstacles
they have on the other side of the water, would
gallop away from a field of our Long Island
horses; for they have speed and bottom, and
are great weight carriers. But on our own
ground, where the cross-country riding is
more like leaping a succession of five and six-
bar gates than anything else, they do not as
a rule> in spite of the enormous prices paid
for them, show themselves equal to the native
stock. The highest recorded jump, seven feet
two inches, was made by the American horse
Filemaker, which I saw ridden in the very
front by Mr. H. L. Herbert, in the hunt at
Sagamore Hill, about to be described.

When I was a member of the Meadowbrook
hunt, most of the meets were held within a
dozen miles or so of the kennels : at Farm-
ingdale, Woodbury, Wheatly, Locust Valley,
Syosset, or near any one of twenty other queer,
quaint old Long Island hamlets. They were
almost always held in the afternoon, the busi
ness men who had come down from the city

Hunting with Hounds 197

jogging over behind the hounds to the ap
pointed place, where they were met by the
men who had ridden over direct from their
country-houses. If the meet was an impor
tant one, there might be a crowd of onlookers
in every kind of trap, from a four-in-hand
drag to a spider-wheeled buggy drawn by a
pair of long-tailed trotters, the money value
of which many times surpassed that of the two
best hunters in the whole field. Now and
then a breakfast would be given the hunt at
some country-house, when the whole day was
devoted to the sport; perhaps after wild
foxes in the morning, with a drag in the
afternoon.

After one meet, at Sagamore Hill, I had the
curiosity to go on foot over the course we had
taken, measuring the jumps; for it is very dif
ficult to form a good estimate of a fence's
height when in the field, and five feet of tim
ber seems a much easier thing to take when
sitting around the fire after dinner than it
does when actually faced while the hounds
are running. On the particular hunt in ques
tion we ran about ten miles, at a rattling pace,
with only two checks, crossing somewhat more
than sixty fences, most of them post-and-rails,
stiff as steel, the others being of the kind called

198 Hunting the Grisly

"Virginia" or snake, and not more than ten
or a dozen in the whole lot under four feet
in height. The highest measured five feet
and half an inch, two others were four feet
eleven, and nearly a third of the number aver
aged about four and a half. There were also
several rather awkward doubles. When the
hounds were cast off some forty riders were
present, but the first fence was a savage one,
and stopped all who did not mean genuine
hard going. Twenty-six horses crossed it, one
of them ridden by a lady. A mile or so fur
ther on, before there had been a chance for
much tailing, we came to a five-bar gate, out
of a road — a jump of just four feet five inches
from the take-off. Up to this, of course, we
went one at a time, at a trot or hand-gallop,
and twenty-five horses cleared it in succes
sion without a single refusal and with but one
mistake. Owing to the severity of the pace,
combined with the average height of the tim
ber (although no one fence was of phenome
nally noteworthy proportions), a good many
falls took place, resulting in an unusually large
percentage of accidents. The master partly
dislocated one knee, another man broke two
ribs, and another — the present writer — broke
his arm. However, almost all of us managed

Hunting with Hounds 199

to struggle through to the end in time to see
the death.

On this occasion I owed my broken arm to
the fact that my horse, a solemn animal origi
nally taken out of a buggy, though a very
clever fencer, was too coarse to gallop along
side the blooded beasts against which he was
pitted. But he was so easy in his gaits, and
so quiet, being ridden with only a snaffle, that
there was no difficulty in following to the end
of the run. I had divers adventures on this
horse. Once I tried a pair of so-called "safe
ty" stirrups, which speedily fell out, and
I had to ride through the run without any, at
the cost of several tumbles. Much the best
hunter I ever owned was a sorrel horse named
Sagamore. He was from Geneseo, was fast,
a remarkably good jumper, of great endur
ance, as quick on his feet as a cat, and with
a dauntless heart. He never gave me a fall,
and generally enabled me to see all the run.

It would be very unfair to think the sport
especially dangerous on account of the occa
sional accidents that happen. A man who is
fond of riding, but who sets a good deal of
value, either for the sake of himself, his fam
ily, or his business, upon his neck and limbs,
can hunt with much safety if he gets a quiet

200 Hunting the Grisly

horse, a safe fencer, and does not try to stay
in the front rank. Most accidents occur to
men on green or wild horses, or else to those
who keep in front only at the expense of
pumping their mounts; and a fall with a
done-out beast is always peculiarly disagree
able. Most falls, however, do no harm what
ever to either horse or. rider, and after they
have picked themselves up and shaken them
selves, the couple ought to be able to go on
just as well as ever. Of course a man who
wishes to keep in the first flight must expect
to face a certain number of tumbles ; but even
he will probably not be hurt at all, and he
can avoid many a mishap by easing up his
horse whenever he can — that is, by always
taking a gap when possible, going at the low
est panel of every fence, and not calling on his
animal for all there is in him unless it can
not possibly be avoided. It must be remem
bered that hard riding is a very different thing
from good riding; though a good rider to
hounds must also at times ride hard.

Cross-country riding in the rough is not a
difficult thing to learn; always provided the
would-be learner is gifted with or has ac
quired a fairly stout heart, for a constitution
ally timid person is out of place in the hunting

Hunting with Hounds 201

field. A really finished cross-country rider,
a man who combines hand and seat, heart and
head, is of course rare; the standard is too
high for most of us to hope to reach. But it is
comparatively easy to acquire a light hand
and a capacity to sit fairly well down in the
saddle; and when a man has once got these,
he will find no especial difficulty in following
the hounds on a trained hunter.

Fox-hunting is a great sport, but it is as
foolish to make a fetich of it as it is to decry
it. The fox is hunted merely because there is
no larger game to follow. As long as wolves,
deer, or antelope remain in the land, and in
a country where hounds and horsemen can
work, no one would think of following the
fox. It is pursued because the bigger beasts
of the chase have been killed out. In England
it has reached its present prominence only
within two centuries; nobody followed the
fox while the stag and the boar were common.
At the present day, on Exmoor, where the
wild stag is still found, its chase ranks ahead
of that of the fox. It is not really the hunting
proper which is the point in fox-hunting. It
is the horsemanship, the galloping and jump
ing, and the being out in the open air. Very
naturally, however, men who have passed

202 Hunting the Grisly

their lives as fox-hunters grow to regard the
chase and the object of it alike with super
stitious veneration. They attribute almost
mythical characters to the animal. I know
some of my good Virginian friends, for in
stance, who seriously believe that the Virginia
red fox is a beast quite unparalleled for speed
and endurance no less than for cunning. This
is of course a mistake. Compared with a
wolf, an antelope, or even a deer, the fox's
speed and endurance do not stand very high.
•A good pack of hounds starting him close
would speedily run into him in the open. The
reason that the hunts last so long in some
cases is because of the nature of the ground
which favors the fox at the expense of the
dogs, because of his having the advantage in
the start, and because of his cunning in turn
ing to account everything which will tell in
his favor and against his pursuers. In the
same way I know plenty of English friends
who speak with bated breath of fox-hunting
but look 'down upon riding to drag-hounds.
Of course there is a difference in the two
sports, and the fun of actually hunting the
wild beast in the one case more than compen
sates for the fact that in the other the riding
is apt to be harder and the jumping higher;

Hunting with Hounds 203

but both sports are really artificial, and in
their essentials alike. To any man who has
hunted big game in a wild country the stress
laid on the differences between them seems
a little absurd, in fact cockney. It is of course
nothing against either that it is artificial; so
are all sports in long-civilized countries, from
lacrosse to ice yachting.

It is amusing to see how natural it is for
each man to glorify the sport to which he has
been accustomed at the expense of any other.
The old-school French sportsman, for in
stance, who followed the boar, stag, and hare
with his hounds, always looked down upon
the chase of the fox; whereas the average En
glishman not only asserts but seriously be
lieves that no other kind of chase can com
pare with it, although in actual fact the very
points in which the Englishman is superior to
the Continental sportsman — that is, in hard
and straight riding and jumping — are those
which drag-hunting tends to develop rather
more than fox-hunting proper. In the mere
hunting itself the Continental sportsman is
often unsurpassed.

Once beyond the Missouri, I met an ex
patriated German baron, an unfortunate who
had failed utterly in the rough life of the

204 Hunting the Grisly

frontier. He was living in a squalid little
hut, almost unfurnished, but studded around
with the diminutive horns of the European
roebuck. These were the only treasures he
had taken with him to remind him of his for
mer life, and he was never tired of describ
ing what fun it was to shoot roebucks when
driven by the little crooked-legged dachs
hunds. There were plenty of deer and ante
lope round about, yielding good sport to any
rifleman, but this exile cared nothing for
them ; they were not roebucks, and they could
not be chased with his beloved dachshunds.
So, among my neighbors in the cattle coun
try, is a gentleman from France, a very suc
cessful ranchman, and a thoroughly good fel
low; he cares nothing for hunting big game,
and will not go after it, but is devoted to shoot
ing cotton-tails in the snow, this being a pas
time having much resemblance to one of the
recognized sports of his own land.

However, our own people afford precisely
similar instances. I have met plenty of men
accustomed to killing wild turkeys and deer
with small-bore rifles in the Southern forests
who, when they got on the plains and in the
Rockies, were absolutely helpless. They not
only failed to become proficient in the art of

Hunting with Hounds 20$

killing big game at long ranges with the large-
bore rifle, at the cost of fatiguing tramps, but
they had a positive distaste for the sport and
would never allow that it equaled their own
stealthy hunts in Southern forests. So I know
plenty of men, experts with the shotgun, who
honestly prefer shooting quail in the East over
well-trained setters or pointers, to the hard
ier, manlier sports of the wilderness.

As it is with hunting, so it is with riding.
The cowboy's scorn of every method of rid
ing save his own is as profound and as igno
rant as is that of the school rider, jockey, or
fox-hunter. The truth is that each of these is
best in his own sphere and is at a disadvan
tage when made to do the work of any of the
others. For all-around riding and horseman
ship, I think the West Point graduate is some
what ahead of any of them. Taken as a class,
however, and compared with other classes as
numerous, and not with a few exceptional in
dividuals, the cowboy, like the Rocky Moun
tain stage-driver, has no superiors anywhere
for His own work; and they are fine fellows,
these iron-nerve'd reinsmen and rough-riders.

When Buffalo Bill took his cowboys to Eu
rope they made a practice in England, France,
Germany, and Italy of offering to break and

206 Hunting the Grisly

ride, in their own fashion, any horse given
them. They were frequently given spoiled
animals from the cavalry services in the dif
ferent countries through which they passed,
animals with which the trained horse-break
ers of the European armies could do nothing;
and yet in almost all cases the cowpunchers
and bronco-busters with Buffalo Bill mas
tered these beasts as readily as they did their
own Western horses. At their own work of
mastering and riding rough horses they could
not be matched by their more civilized rivals;
but I have great doubts whether they in turn
would not have been beaten if they had es
sayed kinds of horsemanship utterly alien to
their past experience, such as riding mettled
thoroughbreds in a steeple-chase, or the like.
Other things being equal (which, however,
they generally are not), a bad, big horse fed
on oats offers a rather more difficult prob
lem than a bad little horse fed on grass.
After Buffalo Bill's men had returned, I oc
casionally heard it said that they had tried
cross-country riding in England, and had
shown themselves pre-eminently skilful there
at, doing better than the English fox-hunters,
but this I take the liberty to disbelieve. I
was in England at the time, hunted occasion-

Hunting with Hounds 107

ally myself, and was with many of the men
who were all the time riding in the most fa
mous hunts; men, too, who were greatly im
pressed with the exhibitions of rough riding
then being given by Buffalo Bill and his men,
and who talked of them much ; and yet I never,
at the time, heard of an instance in which one
of the cowboys rode to hounds with any
marked success.* In the same way I have
sometimes in New York or London heard of
men who, it was alleged, had been out West
and proved better riders than the bronco-
busters themselves, just as I have heard of
similar men who were able to go out hunting
in the Rockies or on the plains and get more
game than the Western hunters; but in the
course of a long experience in the West I
have yet to see any of these men, whether
from the Eastern States or from Europe, ac
tually show such superiority or perform such
feats.

It would be interesting to compare the per
formances of the Australian stock-riders with
those of our own cowpunchers, both in cow-

1 It is, however, quite possible, now that Buffalo Bill's
company has crossed the water several times, that a number
of the cowboys have by practice become proficient in riding
to hounds, and in steeple-chasing.

208 Hunting the Grisly

work and in riding. The Australians have
an entirely different kind of saddle, and the
use of the rope is unknown among them. A
couple of years ago the famous Western rifle
shot, Carver, took some cowboys out to Aus
tralia, and I am informed that many of the
Australians began themselves to practice with
the rope after seeing the way it was used by
the Americans. An Australian gentleman,
Mr. A. J. Sage, of Melbourne, to whom I had
written asking how the saddles and styles of
riding compared, answered me as follows:

"With regard to saddles, here it is a moot
question which is the better, yours or ours, for
buck-jumpers. Carver's boys rode in their
own saddles against our Victorians in theirs,
all on Australian buckers, and honors seemed
easy. Each was good in his own style, but
the horses were not what I should call really
good buckers, such as you might get on a
back station, and so there was nothing in the
show that could unseat the cowboys. It is
only back in the bush that you can get a
really good bucker. I have often seen one of
them put both man and saddle off."

This last is a feat I have myself seen per
formed in the West. I suppose the amount
of it is that both the American and the Aus-

Hunting with Hounds 209

tralian rough riders are, for their own work,
just as good as men possibly can be.

One spring I had to leave the East in the
midst of the hunting season, to join a round
up in the cattle country of western Dakota,
and it was curious to compare the totally dif
ferent styles of riding of the cowboys and the
cross-country men. A stock-saddle weighs
thirty or forty pounds instead of ten or fifteen
and needs an utterly different seat from that
adopted in the East. A cowboy rides with
very long stirrups, sitting forked well down
between his high pommel and cantle, and de
pends upon balance as well as on the grip of
his thighs. In cutting out a steer from a herd,
in breaking a vicious wild horse, in sitting a
bucking bronco, in stopping a night stampede
of many hundred maddened animals, or in the
performance of a hundred other feats of reck
less and daring horsemanship, the cowboy is
absolutely unequaled; and when he has his
own horse gear he sits his animal with the
ease of a centaur. Yet he is quite helpless
the first time he gets astride one of the small
Eastern saddles. One summer, while pur
chasing cattle in Iowa, one of my ranch fore
men had to get on an ordinary saddle to
ride out of town and see a bunch of steers.

210 Hunting the Grisly

He is perhaps the best rider on the ranch,
and will without hesitation mount and master
beasts that I doubt if the boldest rider in one
of our Eastern hunts would care to tackle;
yet his uneasiness on the new saddle was
fairly comical. At first he did not dare to
trot, and the least plunge of the horse bid
fair to unseat him, nor did he begin to get
accustomed to the situation until the very end
of the journey. In fact, the two kinds of rid
ing are so very different that a man only ac
customed to one feels almost as ill at ease
when he first tries the other as if he had never
sat on a horse's back before. It is rather
funny to see a man who only knows one kind,
and is conceited enough to think that that is
really the only kind worth knowing, when
first he is brought into contact with the other.
Two or three times I have known men try
to follow hounds on stock-saddles, which are
about as ill-suited for the purpose as they well
can be; while it is even more laughable to
see some young fellow from the East or from
England, who thinks he knows entirely too
much about horses to be taught by barbarians,
attempt in his turn to do cow-work with his
ordinary riding or hunting rig. It must be
said, however, that in all probability cowboys

Hunting with Hounds 211

would learn to ride well across country much
sooner than the average cross-country rider
would master the dashing and peculiar style
of horsemanship shown by those whose life
business is to guard the wandering herds of
the great Western plains.

Of course, riding to hounds, like all sports
in long settled, thickly peopled countries, fails
to develop in its followers some of the hardy
qualities' necessarily incident to the wilder
pursuits of the mountain and the forest. While
I was on the frontier I was struck by the fact
that of the men from the Eastern States or
from England who had shown themselves at
home to be good riders to hounds or had made
their records as college athletes, a larger pro
portion failed in the life of the wilderness
than was the case among those who had gained
their experience in such rough pastimes as
mountaineering in the high Alps, winter cari
bou-hunting in Canada, or deer-stalking — not
deer-driving — in Scotland.

Nevertheless, of all sports possible in civ
ilized countries, riding to hounds is perhaps
the best if followed as it should be, for the
sake of the strong excitement, with as much
simplicity as possible, and not merely as a
fashionable amusement. It tends to develop

212 Hunting the Grisly

moral no less than physical qualities; the
rider needs nerve and head; he must possess
daring and resolution, as well as a good deal
of bodily skill and a certain amount of wiry
toughness and endurance.

CHAPTER VIII

WOLVES AND WOLF-HOUNDS

THE wolf is the archetype of ravin, the
beast of waste and desolation. It is still
found scattered thinly throughout all the
wilder portions of the United States, but has
everywhere retreated from the advance of
civilization.

Wolves show an infinite variety in color,
size, physical formation, and temper. Al
most all the varieties intergrade with one
another, however, so that it is very difficult
to draw a hard and fast line between any two
of them. Nevertheless, west of the Missis
sippi there are found two distinct types. One
is the wolf proper, or big wolf, specifically
akin to the wolves of the Eastern States. The
other is the little coyote, or prairie wolf. The
coyote and the big wolf are found together in
almost all the wilder districts from the Rio
Grande to the valleys of the Upper Missouri
and the Upper Columbia. Throughout this
region there is always a sharp line of de-

(213)

214 Hunting the Grisly

marcation, especially in size, between the
coyotes and the big wolves of any given dis
trict; but in certain districts the big wolves
are very much larger than their brethren in
other districts. In the upper Columbia
country, for instance, they are very large;
along the Rio Grande they are small. Dr.
Hart Merriam informs me that, according
to his experience, the coyote is largest in
Southern California. In many respects the
coyote differs altogether in habits from its big
relative. For one thing it is far more tolerant
of man. In some localities coyotes are more
numerous around settlements, and even in the
close vicinity of large towns, than they are in
the frowning and desolate fastnesses haunted
by their grim elder brother.

Big wrolves vary far more in color than the
coyotes do. I have seen white, black, red,
yellow, brown, gray, and grizzled skins, and
others representing every shade between, al
though usually each locality has its prevailing
tint. The grizzled, gray, and brown often
have precisely the coat of the coyote. The
difference in size among wolves of different
localities, and even of the same locality, is
quite remarkable, and so, curiously enough,
is the difference in the size of the teeth, in

Wolves and Wolf-Hounds 215

some cases even when the body of one wolf
is as big as that of another. I have seen
wolves from Texas and New Mexico which
were undersized, slim animals with rather
small tusks, in no way to be compared to the
long-toothed giants of their race that dwell
in the heavily timbered mountains of the
Northwest and in the far North. As a rule,
the teeth of the coyote are relatively smaller
than those of the gray wolf.

Formerly wolves were incredibly abundant
in certain parts of the country, notably on the
great plains, where they were known as buf
falo wolves, and were regular attendants on
the great herds of the bison. Every traveler
and hunter of the old days knew them as
among the most common sights of the plains,
and they followed the hunting parties and
emigrant trains for the sake of the scraps left
in camp. Now, however, there is no district
in which they are really abundant. The wolf-
ers, or professional wolf-hunters, who killed
them by poisoning for the sake of their fur,
and the cattlemen, who likewise killed them
by poisoning because of their raids on the
herds, have doubtless been the chief instru
ments in working their decimation on the
plains. In the '70*8, and even in the early

216 Hunting the Grisly

'8o's, many tens of thousands of wolves were
killed by the wolfers in Montana and north
ern Wyoming and western Dakota. Nowa
days the surviving wolves of the plains have
learned caution; they no longer move abroad
at midday, and still less do they dream of
hanging on the footsteps of hunter and trav
eler. Instead of being one of the most com
mon they have become one of the rarest sights
of the plains. A hunter may wander far and
wide through the plains for months nowadays
and never see a wolf, though he will prob
ably see many coyotes. However, the dim
inution goes on, not steadily but by fits and
starts, and, moreover, the beasts now and then
change their abodes, and appear in numbers
in places where they have been scarce for a
long period. In the present winter of 1892-
'93 big wolves are more plentiful in the neigh
borhood of my ranch than they have been for
ten years, and have worked some havoc among
the cattle and young horses. The cowboys
have been carrying on the usual vindictive
campaign against them; a number have been
poisoned, and a number of others have fallen
victims to their greediness, the cowboys sur
prising them when gorged to repletion on the
carcass of a colt or calf, and, in consequence,

Wolves and Wolf-Hounds 217

unable to run, so that they are easily ridden
down, roped, and then dragged to death.

Yet even the slaughter wrought by man in
certain localities does not seem adequate to
explain the scarcity or extinction of wolves,
throughout the country at large. In most
places they are not followed any more eager
ly than are the other large beasts of prey, and
they are usually followed with less success.
Of all animals the wolf is the shyest and hard
est to slay. It is almost or quite as difficult
to still-hunt as the cougar, and is far more
difficult to kill with hounds, traps, or poison;
yet it scarcely holds its own as well as the
great cat, and it does not begin to hold its own
as well as the bear, a beast certainly more
readily killed, and one which produces fewer
young at a birth. Throughout the East the
black bear is common in many localities from
which the wolf has vanished completely. It
at present exists in very scanty numbers in
northern Maine and the Adirondacks; is al
most or quite extinct in Pennsylvania; lin
gers here and there in the mountains from
West Virginia to East Tennessee, and is found
in Florida; but is everywhere less abundant
than the bear. It is possible that this destruc
tion of the wolves is due to some disease among

VOL. III. 10

2i 8 Hunting the Grisly

them, perhaps to hydrophobia, a terrible mal
ady from which it is known that they suffer
greatly at times. Perhaps the bear is helped
by its habit of hibernating, which frees it from
most dangers during winter; but this can not
be the complete explanation, for in the South
it does not hibernate, and yet holds its own
as well as in the North. What makes it all
the more curious that the American wolf
should disappear sooner than the bear is that
the reverse is the case with the allied species
of Europe, where the bear is much sooner
killed out of the land.

Indeed the differences of this sort between
nearly related animals are literally inexpli
cable. Much of the difference in tempera
ment between such closely allied species as
the American and European bears and wolves
is doubtless due to their surroundings and to
the instincts they have inherited through many
generations; but for much of the variation it
is not possible to offer any explanation. In
the same way there are certain physical dif
ferences for which it is very hard to account,
as the same conditions seem to operate in
directly reverse ways with different animals.
No one can explain the process of natural
selection which has resulted in the otter of

Wolves and Wolf-Hounds 219

America being larger than the otter of Eu
rope, while the badger is smaller; in the mink
being with us a much stouter animal than its
Scandinavian and Russian kinsman, while the
reverse is true of our sable or pine marten.
No one can say why the European red deer
should be a pigmy compared to its giant
brother, the American wapiti; why the Old
World elk should average smaller in size than
the almost indistinguishable New World
moose; and yet the bison of Lithuania and
the Caucasus be on the whole larger and more
formidable than its American cousin. In the
same way no one can tell why under like con
ditions some game, such as the white goat and
the spruce grouse, should be tamer than other
closely allied species, like the mountain sheep
and ruffed grouse. No one can say why on
the whole the wolf of Scandinavia and north
ern Russia should be larger and more danger
ous than the average wolf of the Rocky Moun
tains, while between the bears of the same
regions the comparison must be exactly re
versed.

The difference even among the wolves of
different sections of our own country is very
notable. It may be true that the species as a
whole is rather weak and less ferocious than

220 Hunting the Grisly

the European wolf; but it is certainly not
true of the wolves of certain localities. The
great timber wolf of the central and northern
chains of the Rockies and coast ranges is in
every way a more formidable creature than
the buffalo wolf of the plains, although they
intergrade. The skins and skulls of the wolves
of northwestern Montana and Washington
wrhich I have seen were quite as large and
showed quite as stout claws and teeth as the
skins and skulls of Russian and Scandinavian
wolves, and I believe that these great timber
wolves are in every way as formidable as their
Old World kinsfolk. Ho\vever, they live
wrhere they come in contact with a popula
tion of rifle-bearing frontier hunters, who are
very different from European peasants or
Asiatic tribesmen; and they have, even when
most hungry, a wholesome dread of human
beings. Yet I doubt if an unarmed man would
be entirely safe should he, while alone in the
forest in mid-winter, encounter a fair-sized
pack of ravenously hungry timber wolves.

A full-grown dog-wolf of the northern
Rockies, in exceptional instances, reaches a
height of thirty- two inches and a weight of
130 pounds; a big buffalo wolf of the upper
Missouri stands thirty or thirty-one inches at

Wolves and Wolf-Hounds 221

the shoulder and weighs about 110 pounds.
A Texan wolf may not reach over eighty
pounds. The bitch-wolves are smaller; and
moreover there is often great variation even
in the wolves of closely neighboring localities.
The wolves of the Southern plains were not
often formidable to large animals, even in the
days when they most abounded. They rarely
attacked the horses of the hunter, and indeed
were but little regarded by these experienced
animals. Theywere much more likely to gnaw
off the lariat with which the horse was tied,
than to try to molest the steed himself. They
preferred to prey on young animals, or on the
weak and disabled. They rarely molested a
full-grown cow or steer, still less a full-grown
buffalo, and, if they did attack such an ani
mal, it was only when emboldened by num
bers. In the plains of the upper Missouri and
Saskatchewan the wolf was, and is, more dan
gerous, while in the northern Rockies his
courage and ferocity attain their highest pitch.
Near my own ranch the wolves have some
times committed great depredations on cat
tle, but they seem to have queer freaks of
slaughter. Usually they prey only upon calves
and sickly animals; but in midwinter I have
known one single-handed to attack and kill

222 Hunting the Grisly

a well-grown steer or cow, disabling its quarry
by rapid snaps at the hams or flanks. Only
rarely have I known it to seize by the throat.
Colts are likewise a favorite prey, but with
us wolves rarely attack full-grown horses.
They are sometimes very bold in their as
saults, falling on the stock while immediately
around the ranch houses. They even venture
into the hamlet of Medora itself at night—
as the coyotes sometimes do by day. In the
spring of '92 we put on some Eastern two-
year-old steers; they arrived, and were turned
loose from the stockyards, in a snowstorm,
though it was in early May. Next morning
we found that one had been seized, slain, and
partially devoured by a big wolf at the very
gate of the stockyard; probably the beast had
seen it standing near the yard after nightfall,
feeling miserable after its journey, in the
storm and its unaccustomed surroundings, and
had been emboldened to make the assault so
near town by the evident helplessness of the
prey.

The big timber wolves of the northern
Rocky Mountains attack every four-footed
beast to be found where they live. They are
far from contenting themselves with hunting
deer and snapping up the pigs and sheep of

Wolves and Wolf-Hounds 223

the farm. When the weather gets cold and
food scarce they band together in small par
ties, perhaps of four or five individuals, and
then assail anything, even a bear or a panther.
A bull elk or bull moose, when on its guard,
makes a most dangerous fight; but a single
wolf will frequently master the cow of either
animal, as well as domestic cattle and horses.
In attacking such large game, however, the
wolves like to act in concert, one springing
at the animal's head, and attracting its atten
tion, while the other hamstrings it. Never
theless, one such big wolf will kill an or
dinary horse. A man I knew, who was en
gaged in packing into the Coeur d'Alenes, once
witnessed such a feat on the part of a wolf.
He was taking his pack train down into a
valley when he saw a horse grazing therein;
it had been turned loose by another packing
outfit, because it became exhausted. He lost
sight of it as the trail went down a zigzag,
and while it was thus out of sight he sud
denly heard it utter the appalling scream,
unlike and more dreadful than any other
sound, which a horse only utters in extreme
fright or agony. The scream was repeated,
and as he came in sight again he saw that a
great wolf had attacked the horse. The poor

224 Hunting the Grisly

animal had been bitten terribly in its haunches
and was cowering upon them, while the wolf
stood and looked at it a few paces off. In
a moment or two the horse partially recov
ered and made a 'desperate bound forward,
starting at full gallop. Immediately the wolf
was after it, overhauled it in three or four
jumps, and then seized it by the hock, while
its legs were extended, with such violence
as to bring it completely back on its haunches.
It again screamed piteously; and this time
with a few savage snaps the wolf hamstrung
and partially disemboweled it, and it fell
over, having made no attempt to defend it
self. I have heard of more than one incident
of this kind. If a horse is a good fighter,
however, as occasionally, though not often,
happens, it is a most difficult prey for any
wild beast, and some veteran horses have no
fear of wolves whatsoever, well knowing that
they can either strike them down with their
forefeet or repulse them by lashing out be
hind.

Wolves are cunning beasts and will often
try to lull their prey into unsuspicion by play
ing round and cutting capers. I once saw a
young deer and a wolf-cub together near the
hut of the settler who had captured both.

Wolves and Wolf-Hounds 225

The wolf was just old enough to begin to
feel vicious and bloodthirsty, and to show
symptoms of attacking the deer. On the oc
casion in question he got loose and ran to
ward it, but it turned, and began to hit him
with its forefeet, seemingly in sport; whereat
he rolled over on his back before it, and acted
like a puppy at play. Soon it, turned and
walked off; immediately the wolf, with brist
ling hair, crawled after, and with a pounce
seized it by the haunch, and would doubtless
have murdered the bleating, struggling crea
ture, had not the bystanders interfered.

Where there are no domestic animals,
wolves feed on almost anything from a mouse
to an elk. They are redoubted enemies of
foxes. They are easily able to overtake them
in fair chase, and kill numbers. If the fox
can get into the underbrush, however, he can
dodge around much faster than the wolf, and
so escape pursuit. Sometimes one wolf will
try to put a fox out of a cover while another
waits outside to snap him up. Moreover,
the wolf kills even closer kinsfolk than the
fox. When pressed by hunger it will un
doubtedly sometimes seize a coyote, tear it
in pieces and devour it, although during most
of the year the two animals live in perfect

226 Hunting the Grisly

harmony. I once myself, while out in the
deep snow, came across the remains of a
coyote that had been killed in this manner.
Wolves are also very fond of the flesh of
dogs, and if they get a chance promptly kill
and eat any dog they can master — and there
are but few that they can not. Nevertheless,
I have been told of one instance in which a
wolf struck up an extraordinary friendship
with a strayed dog, and the two lived and
hunted together for many months, being fre
quently seen by the settlers of the locality.
This occurred near Thompson's Falls, Mon
tana.

Usually wolves are found singly, in pairs,
or in family parties, each having a large beat
over which it regularly hunts, and also at
times shifting its ground and traveling im
mense distances in order to take up a tem
porary abode in some new locality — for they
are great wanderers. It is only under stress
of severe weather that they band together in
packs. They prefer to creep on their prey
and seize it by a sudden pounce, but, unlike
the cougar, they also run it down in fair chase.
Their slouching, tireless gallop enables them
often to overtake deer, antelope, or other
quarry; though under favorable circum-

Wolves and Wolf-Hounds 227

stances, especially if near a lake, the latter
frequently escape. Whether wolves run cun
ning I do not know; but I think they must,
for coyotes certainly do. A coyote can not
run down a jack- rabbit; but two or three
working together will often catch one. Once
I saw three start a jack, which ran right away
from them ; but they spread out, and followed.
Pretty soon the jack turned slightly, and ran
near one of the outside ones, saw it, became
much frightened, and turned at right angles,
so as soon to nearly run into the other outside
one, which had kept straight on. This hap
pened several times, and then the confused
jack lay down under a sage-bush and was
seized. So I have seen two coyotes attempt
ing to get at a newly dropped antelope kid.
One would make a feint of attack, and lure
the dam into a rush at him, while the other
stole round to get at the kid. The dam, as
always with these spirited little prong-bucks,
made a good fight, and kept the assailants at
bay; yet I think they would have succeeded
in the end, had I not interfered. Coyotes are
bold and cunning in raiding the settlers' barn
yards for lambs and hens; and they have an
especial liking for tame cats. If there are
coyotes in the neighborhood a cat which gets

228 Hunting the Grisly

into the habit of wandering from home is
surely lost.

Though I have never known wolves to at
tack a man, yet in the wilder portion of the
far Northwest I have heard them come around
camp very close, growling so savagely as to
make one almost reluctant to leave the camp
fire and go out into the darkness unarmed.
Once I was camped in the fall near a lonely
little lake in the mountains, by the edge of
quite a broad stream. Soon after nightfall
three or four wolves came around camp and
kept me awake by their sinister and dismal
howling. Two or three times they carne
so close to the fire that I could hear them
snap their jaws and growl, and at one time I
positively thought that they intended to try
to get into camp, so excited were they by the
smell of the fresh meat. After a while they
stopped howling; and then all wras silent for
an hour or so. I let the fire go out and was
turning into bed when I suddenly heard some
animal of considerable size come down to the
stream nearly opposite me and begin to splash
across, first wading, then swimming. It was
pitch dark and I could not possibly see, but
I felt sure it was a wolf. However after com
ing half-way over it changed its mind and

Wolves and Wolf-Hounds 229

swam back to the opposite bank; nor did I
see or hear anything more of the night ma
rauders.

Five or six times on the plains or on my
ranch I have had shots at wolves, always ob
tained by accident and always, I regret to
say, missed. Often the wolf when seen was
running at full speed for cover, or else was
so far off that though motionless my shots
went wide of it. But once have I with my
own rifle killed a wolf, and this was while
traveling with a pack train in the mountains.
We had been making considerable noise, and
I never understood how an animal so wary
permitted our near approach. He did, never
theless, and just as we came to a little stream
which we were to ford I saw him get on a
dead log some thirty yards distant and walk
slowly off with his eyes turned toward us.
The first shot smashed his shoulders and
brought him down.

The wolf is one of the animals which can
only be hunted successfully with dogs. Most
dogs however do not take at all kindly to the
pursuit. A wolf is a terrible fighter. He
will decimate a pack of hounds by rabid snaps
with his giant jaws while suffering little dam
age himself; nor are the ordinary big dogs,

230 Hunting the Grisly

supposed to be fighting dogs, able to tackle
him without special training. I have known
one wolf to kill with a single snap a bulldog
which had rushed at it, wrhile another which
had entered the yard of a Montana ranch
house slew in quick succession both of the
large mastiffs by which it was assailed. The
immense agility and ferocity of the wild
beast, the terrible snap of his long-toothed
jaws, and the admirable training in which
he always is, give him a great advantage over
fat, small-toothed, smooth-skinned dogs, even
though they are nominally supposed to be
long to the fighting classes. In the way that
bench competitions are arranged nowadays
this is but natural, as there is no temptation
to produce a worthy class of fighting dog
when the rewards are given upon technical
points wholly unconnected with the dog's use
fulness. A prize-winning mastiff or bulldog
may be almost useless for the only purposes
for which his kind is ever useful at all. A
mastiff; if properly trained and of sufficient
size, might possibly be able to meet a young
or undersized Texan wolf; but I have never
seen a dog of this variety which I would
esteem a match single-handed for one of the
huge timber wolves of western Montana.

Wolves and Wolf-Hounds 231

Even if the dog was the heavier of the two,
his teeth and claws would be very much
smaller and weaker and his hide less tough.
Indeed I have known of but one dog which
single-handed encountered and slew a wolf;
this was the large vicious mongrel whose feats
are recorded in my Hunting Trips of a Ranch
man.

General Marcy of the United States Army
informed me that he once chased a huge wolf
which had gotten away with a small trap on
its foot. It was, I believe, in Wisconsin, and
he had twenty or thirty hounds witH him, but
they were entirely untrained to wolf-hunting,
and proved unable to stop the crippled beast.
Few of them would attack it at all, and those
that did went at it singly and with a certain
hesitation, and so each in turn was disabled
by a single terrible snap, and left bleeding
on the snow. General Wade Hampton tells
me that in the course of his fifty years' hunt
ing with horse and hound in Mississippi, he
has on several occasions tried his pack of fox
hounds (Southern deer-hounds) after a wolf.
He found that it was with the greatest diffi
culty, however, that he could persuade them
to so much as follow the trail. Usually, as
soon as they came across it, they would growl,

232 Hunting the Grisly

bristle up, and then retreat with their tails
between their legs. But one of his dogs ever
really tried to master a wolf by itself, and this
one paid for its temerity with its life; for
while running a wolf in a canebrake the beast
turned and tore it to pieces. Finally General
Hampton succeeded in getting a number of
his hounds so they would at any rate follow
the trail in full cry, and thus drive the wolf
out of the thicket, and give a chance to the
hunter to get a shot. In this way he killed
two or three.

The true way to kill wolves, however, is to
hunt them with greyhounds on the great
plains. Nothing more exciting than this sport
can possibly be imagined. It is not always
necessary that the greyhounds should be of
absolutely pure blood. Prize-winning dogs
of high pedigree often prove useless for the
purpose. If by careful choice, however, a
ranchman can get together a pack composed
both of the smooth-haired greyhound and the
rough-haired Scotch deer-hound, he can have
excellent sport. The greyhounds sometimes
do best if they have a slight cross of bulldog
in their veins; but this is not necessary. If
once a greyhound can be fairly entered to the
sport and acquires confidence, then its won-

Wolves and Wolf-Hounds

233

derful agility, its sinewy strength and speed,
and the terrible snap with which its jaws come
together, render it a most formidable assail
ant. Nothing can possibly exceed the gallan
try with which good greyhounds, when their
blood is up, fling themselves on a wolf or
any other foe. There does not exist, and
there never has existed on the wide earth, a
more perfect type of dauntless courage than
such a hound. Not Gushing when he steered
his little launch through the black night
against the great ram Albemarle, not Ouster
dashing into the valley of the Rosebud to die
with all his men, not Farragut himself lashed
in the rigging of the Hartford as she forged
past the forts to encounter her ironclad foe,
can stand as a more perfect type of dauntless
valor.

Once I had the good fortune to witness a
very exciting hunt of this character among the
foothills of the northern Rockies. I was
staying at the house of a friendly cowman,
whom I will call Judge Yancy Stump. Judge
Yancy Stump was a Democrat who, as he
phrased it, had fought for his Democracy;
that is, he had been in the Confederate Army.
He was at daggers drawn with his nearest
neighbor, a cross-grained mountain farmer,

234 Hunting the Grisly

who may be known as old man Prindle. Old
man Prindle had been in the Union Army,
and his Republicanism was of the blackest
and most uncompromising type. There was
one point, however, on which the two came
together. They were exceedingly fond of
hunting with hounds. The Judge had three
or four track-hounds, and four of what he
called swift-hounds, the latter including one
pure-bred greyhound bitch of wonderful
speed and temper, a dun-colored yelping ani
mal which was a cross between a greyhound
and a fox-hound, and two others that were
crosses between a greyhound and a wire-
haired Scotch deer-hound. Old man Prin-
dle's contribution to the pack consisted of two
immense brindled mongrels of great strength
and ferocious temper. They were unlike any
dogs I have ever seen in this country. Their
mother herself was a cross between a bull
mastiff and a Newfoundland, while the father
was described as being a big dog that be
longed to a "Dutch Count." The "Dutch
Count" was an outcast German noble, who
had drifted to the West, and, after failing in
the mines and failing in the cattle country,
had died in a squalid log shanty while striv
ing to eke out an existence as a hunter among

Wolves and Wolf -Hounds 235

the foothills. His dog, I presume, from the
description given me, must have been a boar-
hound or Ulm dog.

As I was very anxious to see a wolf-hunt
the Judge volunteered to get one up, and
asked old man Prindle to assist, for the sake
of his two big fighting dogs ; though the very
names of the latter, General Grant and Old
Abe, were gall and wormwood to the unrecon
structed soul of the Judge. Still they were
the only dogs anywhere around capable of
tackling a savage timber wolf, and without
their aid the Judge's own high-spirited ani
mals ran a serious risk of injury, for they were
altogether too game to let any beast escape
without a struggle.

Luck favored us. Two wolves had killed
a calf and dragged it into a long patch of
dense brush where there was a little spring,
the whole furnishing admirable cover for any
wild beast. Early in the morning we started
on horseback for this bit of cover, which was
some three miles off. The party consisted of
the Judge, old man Prindle, a cowboy, my
self, and the dogs. The Judge and I carried
our rifles and the cowboy his revolver, but old
man Prindle had nothing but a heavy whip,
for he swore, with many oaths, that no one

236 Hunting the Grisly

should interfere with his big dogs, for by
themselves they would surely "make the wolf
feel sicker than a stuck hog.'" Our shaggy
ponies racked along at a five-mile gait over
the dewy prairie grass. The two big dogs
trotted behind their master, grim and fero
cious. The track-hounds were tied in couples,
and the beautiful greyhounds loped lightly
and gracefully alongside the horses. The
country was fine. A mile to our right a small
plains river wound in long curves between
banks fringed with cottonwoods. Two or
three miles to our left the foothills rose sheer
and bare, with clumps of black pine and cedar
in their gorges. We rode over gently rolling
prairie, with here and there patches of brush
at the bottoms of the slopes around the dry
watercourses.

At last we reached a somewhat deeper val
ley, in which the wolves were harbored.
Wolves lie close in the daytime and will not
leave cover if they can help it; and as they
had both food and water within we knew it
was most unlikely that this couple would be
gone. The valley was a couple of hundred
yards broad and three or four times as long,
filled with a growth of ash and dwarf elm and
cedar, thorny underbrush choking the spaces

Wolves and Wolf-Hounds 237

between. Posting the cowboy, to whom he
gave his rifle, with two greyhounds on one
side of the upper end, and old man Prindle
with two others on the opposite side, while I
was left at the lower end to guard against the
possibility of the wolves breaking back, the
Judge himself rode into the thicket near me
and loosened the track-hounds to let them
find the wolves' trial. The big dogs also were
uncoupled and allowed to go in with the
hounds. Their power of scent was very poor,
but they were sure to be guided aright by the
baying of the hounds, and their presence
would give confidence to the latter and make
them ready to rout the wolvesi out of the
thicket, which they would probably have
shrunk from doing alone. There was a mo
ment's pause of expectation after the Judge
entered the thicket with his hounds. We sat
motionless on our horses, eagerly looking
through the keen fresh morning air. Then a
clamorous baying from the thicket in which
both the horseman and dogs had disappeared
showed that the hounds had struck the trail
of their quarry and were running on a hot
scent. For a couple of minutes we could not
be quite certain which way the game was go-
Ing to break. The hounds ran zigzag through

23 8 Hunting the Grisly

the brush, as we could tell by their baying?
and once some yelping and a great row
showed that they had come rather closer than
they had expected upon at least one of the
wolves.

In another minute, however, the latter found
it too hot for them and bolted from the thicket
My first notice of this was seeing the cowboy,
who was standing by the side of his horse,
suddenly throw up his rifle and fire, while the
greyhounds who had been springing high in
the air, half maddened by the clamor in the
thicket below, for a moment dashed off the
wrong way, confused by the report of the gun.
I rode for all I was worth to where the cow
boy stood, and instantly caught a glimpse of
two wolves, grizzled-gray and brown, which,
having been turned by his shot, had started
straight over the hill across the plain toward
the mountains three miles away. As soon as
I saw them I also saw that the rearmost of
the couple had been hit somewhere in the
body and was lagging behind, the blood run
ning from its flanks, while the two greyhounds
were racing after it; and at the same moment
the track-hounds and the big dogs burst out
of the thicket, yelling savagely as they struck
the bloody trail. The wolf was hard hit, and

Wolves and Wolf-Hounds 239

staggered as he ran. He did not have a hun
dred yards' start of the dogs, and in less than
a minute one of the greyhounds ranged up
and passed him with a savage snap that
brought him to; and before he could recover
the whole pack rushed at him. Weakened as
he was he could make no effective fight
against so many foes, and indeed had a chance
for but one or two rapid snaps before he was
thrown down and completely covered by the
bodies of his enemies. Yet with one of these
snaps he did damage, as a shrill yell told, and
in a second an over-rash track-hound came
out of the struggle with a deep gash across
his shoulders. The worrying, growling, and
snarling were terrific, but in a minute the
heaving mass grew motionless and the dogs
drew off save one or two that still continued
to worry the dead wolf as it lay stark and stiff
with glazed eyes and rumpled fur.

No sooner were we satisfied that it was
dead than the Judge, with cheers and oaths
and crackings of his whip, urged the dogs
after the other wolf. The two greyhounds
that had been with old man Prindle had for
tunately not been able to see the wolves when
they first broke from the cover, and never saw
the wounded wolf at all, starting off at full

240 Hunting the Grisly

speed after the unwounded one the instant he
topped the crest of the hill. He had taken
advantage of a slight hollow and turned, and
now the chase was crossing us half a mile
away. With whip and spur we flew toward
them, our two greyhounds stretching out in
front and leaving us as if we were standing
still, the track-hounds and big dogs running
after them just ahead of the horses. Fortu
nately the wolf plunged for a moment into a
little brushy hollow and again doubled back,
and this gave us a chance to see the end of
the chase from nearby. The two greyhounds
which had first taken up the pursuit were
then but a short distance behind. Nearer
they crept until they were within ten yards,
and then with a tremendous race the little
bitch ran past him and inflicted a vicious bite
in the big beast's ham. He whirled around
like a top and his jaws clashed like those of a
sprung bear-trap, but quick though he was
she was quicker and just cleared his savage
rush. In another moment he resumed his
flight at full speed, a speed which only that of
the greyhounds exceeded; but almost imme
diately the second greyhound ranged along
side, and though he was not able to bite, be
cause the wolf kept running with its head

Wolves and Wolf-Hounds 241

turned around threatening him, yet by his
feints he delayed the beast's flight so that in
a moment or two the remaining couple of
swift hounds arrived on the scene. For a
moment the wolf and all four dogs galloped
along in a bunch ; then one of the greyhounds,
watching his chance, pinned the beast cleverly
by the hock and threw him completely over.
The others jumped on it in an instant; but
rising by main strength the wolf shook himself
free, catching one dog by the ear and tearing
it half off. Then he sat down on his haunches
and the greyhounds ranged themselves around
him some twenty yards off, forming a ring
which forbade his retreat, though they them
selves did not dare touch him. However
the end was at hand. In another moment
Old Abe and General Grant came running up
at headlong speed and smashed into the wolf
like a couple of battering-rams. He rose on
his hind-legs like a wrestler as they came at
him, the greyhounds also rising and bouncing
up and down like rubber balls. I could just
see the wolf and the first big dog locked to
gether, as the second one made good his
throat-hold. In another moment over all three
tumbled, while the greyhounds and one or
two of the track-hounds jumped in to take

VOL. III. «

242 Hunting the Grisly

part in the killing. The big dogs more than
occupied the wolf's attention and took all the
punishing, while in a trice one of the grey
hounds, having seized him by the hind-leg,
stretched him out, and the others were biting
his undefended belly. The snarling and yell
ing of the worry made a noise so fiendish
that it was fairly bloodcurdling; then it grad
ually died down, and the second wolf lay limp
on the plain, killed by the dogs unassisted.
This wolf was rather heavier and decidedly
taller than either of the big dogs, with more
sinewy feet and longer fangs.

I have several times seen wolves run down
and stopped by greyhounds after a break-neck
gallop and a wildly exciting finish, but this
was the only occasion on which I ever saw
the dogs kill a big full-grown he-wolf unaided.
Nevertheless various friends of mine own
packs that have performed the feat again and
again. One pack, formerly kept at Fort Ben-
ton, until wolves in that neighborhood became
scarce, had nearly seventy-five to its credit,
most of them killed without any assistance
from the hunter; killed moreover by the grey
hounds alone, there being no other dogs with
the pack. These greyhounds were trained to
the throat-hold, and did their own killing in

Wolves and Wolf-Hounds 243

fine style; usually six or eight were slipped
together. General Miles informs me that he
once had great fun in the Indian Territory
hunting wolves with a pack of greyhounds.
They had with the pack a large stub-tailed
mongrel, of doubtful ancestry but most un
doubted fighting capacity. When the wolf
was started the greyhounds were sure to over
take it in a mile or two; they would then
bring it to a halt and stand around it in a ring
until the fighting dog came up. The latter
promptly tumbled on the wolf, grabbing him
anywhere, and often getting a terrific wound
himself at the same time. As soon as he had
seized the wolf and was rolling over with him
in the grapple the other dogs joined in the
fray and despatched the quarry without much
(danger to themselves.

During the last decade many ranchmen in
Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana have de
veloped packs of greyhounds able to kill a
wolf unassisted. Greyhounds trained for this
purpose always seize by the throat; and the
light dogs used for coursing jack-rabbits are
not of much service, smooth or rough-haired
greyhounds and deer-hounds standing over
thirty inches at the shoulder and weighing
over ninety pounds being the only ones that,

244 Hunting the Grisly

together with speed, courage, and endurance,
possess the requisite power.

One of the most famous packs in the West
was that of the Sun River Hound Club, in
Montana, started by the stockmen of Sun
River to get rid of the curse of \volves which
infested the neighborhood and worked very
serious damage to the herds and flocks. The
pack was composed of both greyhounds and
deer-hounds, the best being from the kennels
of ColonelWilliams and of Mr.VanHummel,
of Denver; they were handled by an old
plainsman and veteran wolf-hunter named
Porter. In the season of '86 the astonishing
number of 146 wolves were killed with these
dogs. Ordinarily, as soon as the dogs seized
a wolf, and threw or held it, Porter rushed in
and stabbed it with his hunting-knife; one
day, when out with six hounds, he thus killed
no less than twelve out of the fifteen wolves
started, though one of the greyhounds was
killed, and all the others were cut and ex
hausted. But often the wolves were killed
without his aid. The first time the two big
gest hounds — deer-hounds or w7ire-haired
greyhounds — were tried, when they had been
at the ranch only three days, they performed
such a feat. A large wolf had killed and par-

Wolves and Wolf-Hounds 245

tially eaten a sheep in a corral close to the
ranch house, and Porter started on the trail,
and followed him at a jog-trot nearly ten miles
before the hounds sighted him. Running but
a few rods, he turned viciously to bay, and the
two great greyhounds struck him like stones
hurled from a catapult, throwing him as they
fastened on his throat; they held him down
and strangled him before he could rise, two
other hounds getting up just in time to help at
the end of the worry.

Ordinarily, however, no two greyhounds or
fdeer-hounds are a match for a gray wolf,
but I have known of several instances in Col
orado, Wyoming and Montana, in which three
strong veterans have killed one. The feat
can only be performed by big dogs of the
highest courage, who all act together, rush in
at top speed, and seize by the throat; for the
strength of the quarry is such that otherwise
he will shake off the dogs, and then speedily
kill them by rapid snaps with his terribly
armed jaws. Where possible, half a dozen
dogs should be slipped at once, to minimize
the risk of injury to the pack; unless this is
done, and unless the Hunter helps the dogs in
the worry, accidents will be frequent and an
occasional wolf will be found able to beat off,

246 Hunting the Grisly

maiming or killing, a lesser number of assail
ants. Some hunters prefer the smooth grey
hound, because of its great speed, and others
the wire-coated animal, the rough deer-hound,
because of its superior strength; both, if of
the right kind, are dauntless fighters.

Colonel Williams' greyhounds have per
formed many noble feats in wolf-hunting. He
spent the winter of 1875 m trie Black Hills,
which at that time did not contain a single
settler and fairly swarmed with game.
Wolves were especially numerous and very
bold and fierce, so that the dogs of the party
were continually in jeopardy of their lives.
On the other hand they took an ample ven
geance, for many wolves wrere caught by the
pack. Whenever possible, the horsemen kept
close enough to take an immediate hand in
the fight, if the quarry wras a full-grown wolf,
and thus save the dogs from the terrible pun
ishment they were otherwise certain to re
ceive. The dogs invariably throttled, rushing
straight at the throat, but the wounds they
themselves received were generally in the flank
or belly; in several instances these wounds
resulted fatally. Once or twice a wolf was
caught, and held by two greyhounds until the
horsemen came up; but it took at least five

Wolves and Wolf-Hounds 247

dogs to overcome and slay unaided a big tim
ber wolf. Several times the feat was per
formed by a party of five, consisting of two
greyhounds, one rough-coated deer-hound,
and two cross-bloods; and once by a litter of
seven young greyhounds, not yet come to their
full strength.

Once or twice the so-called Russian wolf
hounds or silky coated greyhounds, the "bor
zois," have been imported and tried in wolf-
hunting on the Western plains; but hither
to they have not shown themselves equal, at
either running or fighting, to the big Ameri
can-bred greyhounds of the type produced by
Colonel Williams and certain others of our
best Western breeders. Indeed I have never
known any foreign greyhounds, whether
Scotch, English, or from Continental Eu
rope, to perform such feats of courage, en
durance, and strength, in chasing and killing
dangerous game, as the home-bred greyhounds
of Colonel Williams.

CHAPTER IX

IN COWBOY LAND

OUT on the frontier, and generally among
those who spend their lives in, or on the
borders of, the wilderness, life is reduced to
its elemental conditions. The passions and
emotions of these grim hunters of the moun
tains, and wild rough-riders of the plains, are
simpler and stronger than those of people
dwelling in more complicated states of society.
As soon as the communities become settled
and begin to grow with any rapidity, the
American instinct for law asserts itself; but
in the earlier stages each individual is obliged
to be a law to himself and to guard his rights
with a strong hand. Of course the transition
periods are full of incongruities. Men have
not yet adjusted their relations to morality and
law with any niceness. They hold strongly by
certain rude virtues, and on the other hand
they quite fail to recognize even as shortcom
ings not a few traits that obtain scant mercy
in older communities. Many of the despera-
(248)

In Cowboy Land 249

does, the man-killers, and road-agents have
good sides to their characters. Often they
are people who, in certain stages of civiliza
tion, do, or have done, good work, but who,
when these stages have passed, find themselves
surrounded by conditions which accentuate
their worst qualities, and make their best qual
ities useless. The average desperado, for in
stance, has, after all, much the same standard
of morals that the Norman nobles had in the
days of the battle of Hastings, and, ethically
and morally, he is decidedly in advance of the
vikings, who were the ancestors of these same
nobles — and to whom, by the way, he himself
could doubtless trace a portion of his blood.
If the transition from the wild lawlessness of
life in the wilderness or on the border to a
higher civilization were stretched out over a
term of centuries, he and his descendants
would doubtless accommodate themselves by
degrees to the changing circumstances. But
unfortunately in the far West the transition
takes place with marvelous abruptness, and
at an altogether unheard-of speed, and many
a man's nature is unable to change with suffi
cient rapidity to allow him to harmonize with
his environment. In consequence, unless he
leaves for still wilder lands, he ends by getting

250 Hunting the Grisly

hanged instead of founding a family which
would revere his name as that of a very capa
ble, although not in all respects a convention
ally moral, ancestor.

Most of the men with whom I was inti
mately thrown during my life on the frontier
and in the wilderness were good fellows, hard
working, brave, resolute, and truthful. At
times, of course, they were forced of necessity
to do deeds which would seem startling to
dwellers in cities and in old settled places;
and though they waged a very stern and re
lentless warfare upon evil-doers whose mis
deeds had immediate and tangible bad results,
they showed a wide toleration of all save the
most extreme classes of wrong, and were not
given to inquiring too curiously into a strong
man's past, or to criticising him over-harshly
for a failure to discriminate in finer ethical
questions. Moreover, not a few of the men
with whom I came in contact — with some of
whom my relations were very close and
friendly — had at different times led rather
tough careers. This was accepted by them
and by their companions as a fact, and —
nothing more. There were certain offences,
such as rape, the robbery of a friend, or mur
der under circumstances of cowardice and

In Cowboy Land 251

treachery, which were never forgiven; but
the fact that when the country was wild a
young fellow had gone on the road — that is,
become a highwayman, or had been chief of a
gang of desperadoes, horse-thieves, and cattle-
killers — was scarcely held to weigh against
him, being treated as a regrettable, but cer
tainly not shameful, trait of youth. He was
regarded by his neighbors with the same
kindly tolerance which respectable mediaeval
Scotch borderers doubtless extended to their
wilder young men who would persist in raid
ing English cattle even in time of peace.

Of course if these men were asked outright
as to their stories they would have refused
to tell them or else would have lied about
them; but when they had grown to regard
a man as a friend and companion they would
often recount various incidents of their past
lives with perfect frankness, and as they com
bined in a very curious degree both a decided
sense of humor, and a failure to appreciate
that there was anything especially remarkable
in what they related, their tales were always
entertaining.

Early one spring, now nearly ten years ago,
I was out hunting some lost horses. They
had strayed from the range three months be-

252 Hunting the Grisly

fore, and we had in a roundabout way heard
that they were ranging near some broken
country, where a man named Brophy had a
ranch, nearly fifty miles from my own. When
I started thither the weather was warm, but
the second day out it grew colder and a heavy
snowstorm came on. Fortunately I was able
to reach the ranch all right, finding there one
of the sons of a Little Beaver ranchman, and
a young cowpuncher belonging to a Texas
outfit, whom I knew very well. After putting
my horse into the corral and throwing him
down some hay I strode into the low hut,
made partly of turf and partly of cottonwood
logs, and speedily warmed myself before the
fire. We had a good warm supper, of bread,
potatoes, fried venison, and tea. My two
companions grew very sociable and began to
talk freely over their pipes. There were two
bunks one above the other. I climbed into
the upper, leaving my friends, who occupied
the lower, sitting together on a bench recount
ing different incidents in the careers of them
selves and their cronies during the winter that
had just passed. Soon one of them asked
the other what had become of a certain horse,
a noted cutting pony, which I had myself
noticed the preceding fall. The question

In Cowboy Land 253

aroused the other to the memory of a wrong
which still rankled, and he began (I alter one
or two of the proper names) :

"Why, that was the pony that got stole.
I had been workin' him on rough ground
when I was out with the Three Bar outfit and
he went tender forward, so I turned him loose
by the Lazy B ranch, and when I came back
to git him there wasn't anybody at the ranch
and I couldn't find him. The sheep-man who
lives about two miles west, under Red Clay
butte, told me he seen a fellow in a wolfskin
coat, ridin' a pinto bronco, with white eyes,
leadin' that pony of mine just two days be
fore; and I hunted round till I hit his trail
and then I followed to where I'd reckoned he
was headin' for — the Short Pine Hills. When
I got there a rancher told me he had seen the
man pass on towards Cedartown, and sure
enough when I struck Cedartown I found he
lived there in a 'dobe house, just outside the
town. There was a boom on the town and
it looked pretty slick. There was two hotels
and I went into the first, and I says, Where's
the justice of the peace?' says I to the bar
tender.

" 'There ain't no justice of the peace/
says he, 'the justice of the peace got shot.'

254 Hunting the Grisly

" Well, where's the constable?' says I.

" Why, it was him that shot the justice of
the peace!' says he; 'he's skipped the coun
try with a bunch of horses.'

" Well, ain't there no officer of the law left
in this town?' says I.

" Why, of course,' says he, 'there's a pro
bate judge; he is over tendin' bar at the Last
Chance Hotel.'

"So I went over to the Last Chance Hotel
and I walked in there. 'Mornin',' says I.

" 'Mornin',' says he.

" 'You're the probate judge?' says I.

" 'That's what I am,' says he. What do
you want?' says he.

" 'I want justice,' says I.

What kind of justice do you want?' says
he. What's it for?'

It's for stealin' a horse,' says I.
'Then by God you'll git it,' says he.
Who stole the horse?' says he.

" 'It is a man that lives in a 'dobe house,
just outside the town there,' says I.

" Well, where do you come from your
self?' said he.

" 'From Medory,' said I.

"With that he lost interest and settled kind
o' back, and says he, 'There won't no Cedar-

" '
"'

In Cowboy Land 255

town jury hang a Cedartown man for stealin'
a Medory man's horse/ said he.

" Well, what am I to do about my horse ?'
says I.

" 'Do?' says he; Veil, you know where the
man lives, don't you?' says he; 'then sit up
outside his house to-night and shoot him when
he comes in,' says he, 'and skip out with the
horse.'

" 'All right,' says I, 'that is what I'll do,'
and I walked off.

"So I went off to his house and I laid down
behind some sage-bushes to wait for him. He
was not at home, but I could see his wife
movin' about inside now and then, and I
waited and waited, and it growed darker, and
I begun to say to myself, 'Now here you are
lyin' out to shoot this man when he comes
home; and it's gettin' dark, and you don't
know him, and if you do shoot the next man
that comes into that house, like as not it won't
be the fellow you're after at all, but some
perfectly innocent man a-comin' there after
the other man's wife P

"So I up and saddled the bronc' and lit
out for home," concluded the narrator with
the air of one justly proud of his own self-
abnegating virtue.

256 Hunting the Grisly

The "town" where the judge above-men
tioned dwelt was one of those squalid pre
tentiously named little clusters of makeshift
dwellings which on the edge of the wild
country spring up with the rapid growth of
mushrooms, and are often no longer lived.
In their earlier stages these towns are fre
quently built entirely of canvas, and are sub
ject to grotesque calamities. When the terri
tory purchased from the Sioux, in the Da-
kotas, a couple of years ago, was thrown open
to settlement there was a furious inrush of men
on horseback and in wagons, and various am
bitious cities sprang up overnight. The new
settlers were all under the influence of that
curious craze which causes every true West
erner to put unlimited faith in the unknown
and untried; many had left all they had in a
far better farming country, because they were
true to their immemorial belief that, \vherever
they were, their luck would be better if they
went somewhere else. They were always on
the move, and headed for the vague beyond.
As miners see visions of all the famous mines
of history in each new camp, so these would-be
city founders saw future St. Pauls and Oma-
has in every forlorn group of tents pitched by
some muddy stream in a desert of gumbo and

In Cowboy Land 257

sage-brush; and they named both the towns
and the canvas buildings in accordance with
their bright hopes for the morrow, rather
than with reference to the mean facts of the
day. One of these towns, which when twenty-
four hours old boasted of six saloons, a "court
house," and an "opera house," was over
whelmed by early disaster. The third day
of its life a whirlwind came along and took
off the opera house and half the saloons; and
the following evening lawless men nearly
finished the work of the elements. The riders
of a huge trail-outfit from Texas, to their glad
surprise discovered the town and abandoned
themselves to a night of roaring and lethal
carousal. Next morning the city authorities
were lamenting, with oaths of bitter rage, that
"them hell-and-twenty Flying A cowpunchers
had cut the court-house up into pants." It
was true. The cowboys were in need of
shaps, and with an admirable mixture of ad-
venturousness, frugality, and ready adapta
bility to circumstances, had made substitutes
therefor in the shape of canvas overalls, cut
from the roof and walls of the shaky temple
of juctice.

One of my valued friends in the mountains,
and one of the best hunters with whom I ever

258 Hunting the Grisly

traveled, was a man who had a peculiarly
light-hearted way of looking at conventional
social obligations. Though in some ways a
true backwoods Donatello, he was a man of
much shrewdness and of great courage and
resolution. Moreover, he possessed what
only a few men do possess, the capacity to
tell the truth. He saw facts as they were,
and could tell them as they were, and he never
told an untruth unless for very weighty rea
sons. He was pre-eminently a philosopher,
of a happy, sceptical turn of mind. He had
no prejudices. He never looked down, as so
many hard characters do, upon a person pos
sessing a different code of ethics. His atti
tude was one of broad, genial tolerance. He
saw nothing out of the way in the fact that
he had himself been a road-agent, a profes
sional gambler, and a desperado at different
stages of his career. On the other hand, he
did not in the least hold it against any one
that he had always acted within the law. At
the time that I knew him he had become a
man of some substance, and naturally a stanch
upholder of the existing order of things. But
while he never boasted of his past deeds, he
never apologized for them, and evidently
would have been quite as incapable of under-

In Cowboy Land 259

standing that they needed an apology as he
would have been incapable of being guilty
of mere vulgar boastfulness. He did not
often allude to his past career at all. When
he did, he recited its incidents perfectly nat
urally and simply, as events, without any ref
erence to or regard for their ethical signifi
cance. It was this quality which made him
at times a specially pleasant companion, and
always an agreeable narrator. The point of
his story, or what seemed to him the point,
was rarely that which struck me. It was the
incidental sidelights the story threw upon his
own nature and the somewhat lurid surround
ings amid which he had moved.

On one occasion when we were out to
gether we killed a bear, and after skinning
it, took a bath in a lake. I noticed he had
a scar on the side of his foot and asked him
how he got it, to which he responded, with
indifference:

"Oh, that? Why, a man shootin' at me to
make me dance, that was all."

I expressed some curiosity in the matter,
and he went on:

"Well, the way of it was this : It was when
I was keeping a saloon in New Mexico, and
there was a man there by the name of Fowler,

260 Hunting the Grisly

and there was a reward on him of three thou
sand dollars—

"Put on him by the State?"

"No, put on by his wife," said my friend;
"and there was this — "

"Hold on," I interrupted; "put on by his
wife did you say?"

"Yes, by his wife. Him and her had been
keepin' a faro bank, you see, and they quar
reled about it, so she just put a reward on
him, and so — "

"Excuse me," I said, "but do you mean to
say that this reward was put on publicly?" to
which my friend answered, with an air of gen
tlemanly boredom at being interrupted to
gratify my thirst for irrelevant detail :

"Oh, no, not publicly. She just mentioned
it to six or eight intimate personal friends."

"Go on," I responded, somewhat overcome
by this instance of the primitive simplicity
with which New Mexican matrimonial dis
putes were managed, and he continued:

"Well, two men come ridin' in to see me to
borrow my guns. My guns was Colt's self-
cockers. It was a new thing then, and they
was the only ones in town. These come to
me, and 'Simpson,' says they, Sve want to bor
row your guns; we are goin' to kill Fowler.'

In Cowboy Land 261

" 'Hold on for a moment/ said I, (I am
willin' to lend you them guns, but I ain't go-
in' to know what you V goin' to do \vith them,
no sir; but of course you can have the guns.' '
Here my friend's face lightened pleasantly,
and he continued:

"Well, you may easily believe I felt sur
prised next day when Fowler come ridin' in,
and, says he, 'Simpson, here's your guns!'
He had shot them two men! Well, Fowler/
says I, 'if I had known them men was after
you, I'd never have let them have them guns
nohow,' says I. That wasn't true, for I did
know it, but there was no cause to tell him
that." I murmured my approval of such
prudence, and Simpson continued, his eyes
gradually brightening with the light of agree
able reminiscence:

"Well, they up and they took Fowler before
the justice of the peace. The justice of the
peace was a Turk."

"Now, Simpson, what do you mean by
that?" I interrupted.

"Well, he come from Turkey," said Simp
son, and I again sank back, wondering briefly
what particular variety of Mediterranean out
cast had drifted down to Mexico to be made
a justice of the peace. Simpson laughed and

262 Hunting the Grisly

continued: "That Fowler was a funny fel
low. The Turk, he- committed Fowler, and
Fowler, he riz up and knocked him down
and tromped all over him and made him let
him go!"

"That was an appeal to a higher law," I
observed. Simpson assented cheerily, and
continued:

"Well, that Turk, he got nervous for fear
Fowler he was goin' to kill him, and so he
comes to me and offers me twenty-five dollars
a day to protect him from Fowler; and I went
to Fowler, and 'Fowler,' says I, 'that Turk 's
offered me twenty-five dollars a day to protect
him from you. Now, I ain't goin' to get shot
for no twenty-five dollars a day, and if you
are goin' to kill the Turk, just say so and go
and do it; but if you ain't goin' to kill the
Turk, there's no reason why I shouldn't earn
that twenty-five dollars a day!' and Fowler,
says he, 'I ain't goin' to touch the Turk; you
just go right ahead and protect him.' '

So Simpson "protected" the Turk from the
imaginary danger of Fowler, for about a
week, at twenty-five dollars a day. Then
one evening he happened to go out and met
Fowler, "and," said he, "the moment I saw
him I know he felt mean, for he begun to

In Cowboy Land 263

shoot at my feet," which certainly did seem
to offer presumptive evidence of meanness.
Simpson continued:

"I didn't have no gun, so I just had to
stand there and take it until something dis
tracted his attention, and I went off home to
get my gun and kill him, but I wanted to do
it perfectly lawful ; so I went up to the mayor
(he was playin' poker with one of the judges) ,
and says I to him, 'Mr. Mayor/ says I, 'I
am goin' to shoot Fowler.' And the mayor he
riz out of his chair and he took me by the
hand, and says he, 'Mr. Simpson, if you do I
will stand by you;' and the judge, he says,
Til go on your bond.' '

Fortified by this cordial approval of the ex
ecutive and judicial branches of the govern
ment, Mr. Simpson started on his quest.
Meanwhile, however, Fowler had cut up an
other prominent citizen, and they already had
him in jail. The friends of law and order
feeling some little distrust as to the perma
nency of their own zeal for righteousness,
thought it best to settle the matter before there
was time for cooling, and accordingly, headed
by Simpson, the mayor, the judge, the Turk,
and other prominent citizens of the town,
they broke into the jail and hanged Fowler.

264 Hunting the Grisly

The point in the hanging which especially
tickled my friend's fancy as he lingered over
the reminiscence, was one that was rather too
ghastly to appeal to our own sense of humor.
In the Turk's mind there still rankled the
memory of Fowler's very unprofessional con
duct while figuring before him as a criminal.
Said Simpson, with a merry twinkle of the
eye: "Do you know that Turk, -he was a right
funny fellow too after all. Just as the boys
were going to string up Fowler, says he, 'Boys,
stop; one moment, gentlemen, — Mr. Fowler,
good-by,' and he blew a kiss to him!"

In the cow-country, and elsewhere on the
wild borderland between savagery and civ
ilization, men go quite as often by nicknames
as by those to which they are lawfully entitled.
Half the cowboys and hunters of my acquaint
ance are known by names entirely unconnected
with those they inherited or received when
they were christened. Occasionally some
would-be desperado or make-believe mighty
hunter tries to adopt what he deems a title
suitable to his prowess; but such an effort is
never attempted in really wild places, where
it would be greeted with huge derision; for
all of these names that are genuine are be
stowed by outsiders, with small regard to the

In Cowboy Land 265

wishes of the person named. Ordinarily the
name refers to some easily recognizable acci
dent of origin, occupation, or aspect; as wit
ness the innumerable Dutcheys, Frencheys,
Kentucks, Texas Jacks, Bronco Bills, Bear
Joes, Buckskins, Red Jims, and the like.
Sometimes it is apparently meaningless; one
cf my cow-puncher friends is always called
"Sliver" or "Splinter" — why, I have no idea.
At other times some particular incident may
give rise to the title: a clean-looking cowboy
formerly in my employ was always known as
"Muddy Bill," because he had once been
bucked off his horse into a mud hole.

The grewsome genesis of one such name is
given in the following letter which I have
just received from an old hunting-friend in the
Rockies, who took a kindly interest in a fron
tier cabin which the Boone and Crockett Club
was putting up at the Chicago World's Fair.

"Feb 1 6th 1893 ; Der Sir : I see in the newspapers
that your club the Daniel Boon and Davey Crockit
you Intend to erect a fruntier Cabin at the world's
Far at Chicago to represent the erley Pianears of
our country I would like to see you maik a success
I have all my life been a fruntiersman and feel in
terested in your undertaking and I hoap you wile

VOL. III.

266 Hunting the Grisly

get a good assortment of relicks I want to maik
one suggestion to you that is in regard to geting
a good man and a genuine Mauntanner to take
charg of your haus at Chicago I want to recommend
a man for you to get it is Liver-eating Johnson that
is the naim he is generally called he is an olde
mauntneer and large and fine looking and one of
the Best Story Tellers in the country arid Very
Polight genteel to every one he meets I wil tel you
how he got that naim Liver-eating in a hard Fight
with the Black Feet Indians thay Faught all day
Johnson and a few Whites Faught a large Body
of Indians all day after the fight Johnson cam in
contact with a wounded Indian and Johnson was
aut of ammunition and thay faught it out with thar
Knives and Johnson got away with the Indian and
in the fight cut the livver out of the Indian and
said to the Boys did thay want any Liver to eat
that is the way he got the naim of Liver-eating
Johnson

"Yours truly" etc., etc.

Frontiersmen are often as original in their
theories of life as in their names; and the
originality may take the form of wild savag
ery, of mere uncouthness, or of an odd combi
nation of genuine humor with simple accept
ance of facts as they are. On one occasion
I expressed some surprise at learning that a
certain Mrs. P. had suddenly married, though

In Cowboy Land 267

her husband was alive and in jail in a neigh
boring town; and received for answer: "Well,
you see, old man Pete he skipped the country,
and left his widow behind him, and so Bob
Evans he up and married her!" — which was
evidently felt to be a proceeding requiring
no explanation whatever.

In the cow-country there is nothing more
refreshing than the light-hearted belief enter
tained by the average man to the effect that
any animal which by main force has been sad
dled and ridden, or harnessed and driven a
couple of times, is a "broke horse." My pres
ent foreman is firmly wedded to this idea, as
well as to its complement, the belief that any
animal with hoofs, before any vehicle with'
wheels, can be driven across any country.
One summer on reaching the ranch I was en
tertained with the usual accounts of the ad
ventures and misadventures which had befal
len my own men and my neighbors since I
had been out last. In the course of the con
versation my foreman remarked: "We had
a great time out here about six weeks ago.
There was a professor from Ann Arbor came
out writh his wife to see the Bad Lands, and
they aske'd if we could rig them up a team,
and we said we guessed we could, and Foley's

268 Hunting the Grisly

boy and I did ; but it ran away with him and
broke his leg! He was here for a month. I
guess he didn't mind it though." Of this I
was less certain, forlorn little Medora being
a "busted" cow-town, concerning which I once
heard another of my men remark, in reply to
an inquisitive commercial traveler: "How
many people lives here? Eleven — counting
the chickens — when they're all in town!"

My foreman continued: "By George, there
was something that professor said afterward
that made me feel hot. I sent word up to him
by Foley's boy that seein' as how it had come
out we would n't charge him nothin' for the
rig; and that professor he answered that he
was glad we were showing him some sign of
consideration, for he'd begun to believe he'd
fallen into a den of sharks, and that we gave
him a runaway team a purpose. That made
me hot, calling that a runaway team. Why,
there was one of them horses never could have
run away before; it had n't never been druv
but twice! and the other horse maybe had run
away a few times, but there was lots of times
he had n't run away. I esteemed that team
full as liable not to run away as it was to run
away," concluded my foreman, evidently
deeming this as good a warranty of gentleness

In Cowboy Land 269

in a horse as the most exacting could possibly
require.

The definition of good behavior on the
frontier is even more elastic for a saddle-
horse than for a team. Last spring one of
the Three-Seven riders, a magnificent horse
man, was killed on the round-up near Belfield,
his horse bucking and falling on him. "It
was accounted a plumb gentle horse too," said
my informant, "only it sometimes sulked and
acted a little mean when it was cinched up
behind." The unfortunate rider did not know
of this failing of the "plumb gentle horse,"
and as soon as he was in the saddle it threw
itself over sideways with a great bound, and
he fell on his head, and never spoke again.

Such accidents are too common in the wild
country to attract very much attention; the
men accept them with grim quiet, as inevita
ble in such lives as theirs — lives that are harsh
and narrow in their toil and their pleasure
alike, and that are ever-bounded by an iron
horizon of hazard and hardship. During the
last year and a half three other men from the
ranches in my immediate neighborhood have
met their deaths in the course of their work.
One, a trail boss of the O X, was drowned
while swimming his herd across a swollen

270 Hunting the Grisly

river. Another, one of the fancy ropers of the
W Bar, was killed while roping cattle in a
corral; his saddle turned, the rope twisted
round him, he was pulled off, and was
trampled to death by his own horse.

The fourth man, a cowpuncher named
Hamilton, lost his life during the last wreek
of October, 1891, in the first heavy snow
storm of the season. Yet he was a skilled
plainsman, on ground he knew well, and just
before straying himself, he successfully in
structed two men who did not know the coun
try how to get to camp. They were all three
with the round-up, and were making a circle
through the Bad Lands; the wagons had
camped on the eastern edge of these Bad
Lands, where they merged into the prairie, at
the head of an old disused road, which led
about due east from the Little Missouri. It
was a gray, lowering day, and as darkness
came on Hamilton's horse played out, and he
told his two companions not to wait, as it had
begun to snow, but to keep on toward the
north, skirting some particularly rough buttes,
and as soon as they struck the road to turn
to the right and follow it out to the prairie,
where they would find camp; he particularly
warned them to keep a sharp lookout, so as

In Cowboy Land 271

not to pass over the dim trail unawares in the
dusk and the storm. They followed his ad
vice, and reached camp safely; and after they
had left him nobody ever again saw him alive.
Evidently he himself, plodding northward,
passed over the road without seeing it in the
gathering gloom; probably he struck it at
some point where the ground was bad, and
the dim trail in consequence disappeared en
tirely, as is the way with these prairie roads
— making them landmarks to be used with
caution. He must then have walked on and
on, over rugged hills and across deep ravines,
until his horse came to a standstill; he took
off its saddle and picketed it to a dwarfed ash.
Its frozen carcass was found with the saddle
near by, two months later. He now evidently
recognized some landmark, and realized that
he had passed the road, and was far to the
north of the round-up wagons; but he was a
resolute, self-confident man, and he deter
mined to strike out for a line camp, which
he knew lay about due east of him, two or
three miles out on the prairie, on one of the
head branches of Knife River. Night must
have fallen by this time, and he missed the
camp, probably passing it within less than a
mile; but he did pass it, and with it all hopes

272 Hunting the Grisly

of life, and walke'd wearily on to his doom,
through the thick darkness and the driving
snow. At last his strength failed, and he lay
down in the tall grass of a little hollow. Five
months later, in the early spring, the riders
from the line camp found his body, resting
face downward, with the forehead on the
folded arms.

Accidents of less "degree are common. Men
break their collar-bones, arms, or legs by fall
ing when riding at speed over dangerous
ground, when cutting cattle or trying to con
trol a stampeded herd, or by being thrown
or rolled on by bucking or rearing horses;
or their horses, and on rare occasions even
they themselves, are gored by fighting steers.
Death by storm or in flood, death in striving
to master a wild and vicious horse, or in hand
ling maddened cattle, and too often death in
brutal conflict with one of his own fellows
— any one of these is the not unnatural end
of the life of the dweller on the plains or in
the mountains.

But a few years ago other risks had to be
run from savage beasts, and from the Indians.
Since I have been ranching on the Little
Missouri, two men have been killed by bears
in the neighborhood of my range; and in the

In Cowboy Land 273

early years of my residence there, several men
living or traveling in the country were slain
by small war-parties of young braves. All
the old-time trappers and hunters could tell
stirring tales of their encounters with Indians.

My friend, Tazewell Woody, was among
the chief actors in one of the most noteworthy
adventures of this kind. He was a very quiet
man, and it was exceedingly difficult to get
him to talk over any of his past experiences;
but one day, when he was in high good-humor
with me for having made three consecutive
straight shots at elk, he became quite com
municative, and I was able to get him to tell
me one story which I had long wished to hear
from his lips, having already heard of it
through one of the other survivors of the in
cident. When he found that I already knew
a good deal old Woody told me the rest.

It was in the spring of 1875, and Woody
and two friends were trapping on the Yellow
stone. The Sioux were very bad at the time
and had killed many prospectors, hunters,
cowboys, and settlers; the whites retaliated
whenever they got a chance, but, as always
in Indian warfare, the sly, lurking, blood
thirsty savages inflicted much more loss than
they suffered.

274 Hunting the Grisly

The three men, having a dozen horses with
them, were camped by the river-side in a tri
angular patch of brush, shaped a good deal
like a common flatiron. On reaching camp
they started to put out their traps; and when
he came back in the evening Woody informed
his companions that he had seen a great deal
of Indian sign, and that he believed there
were Sioux in the neighborhood. His com
panions both laughed at him, assuring him
that they were not Sioux at all but friendly
Crows, and that they would be in camp next
morning; "and sure enough," said Woody,
meditatively, "they were in camp next morn
ing." By dawn one of the men went down
the river to look at some of the traps, while
Woody started out to where the horses were,
the third man remaining in camp to get break
fast. Suddenly two shots were heard down
the river, and in another moment a mounted
Indian swept toward the horses. Woody
fired, but missed him, and he drove off five
while Woody, running forward, succeeded in
herding the other seven into camp. Hardly
had this been accomplished before the man
who had gone down the river appeared, out
of breath with his desperate run, having been
surprised by several Indians, and just sue-

In Cowboy Land 275

ceeding in making his escape by dodging from
bush to bush, threatening his pursuers with
his rifle.

These proved to be but the forerunners of
a great war party, for when the sun rose the
hills around seemed black with Sioux. Had
they chosen to dash right in on the camp,
running the risk of losing several of their men
in the charge, they could of course have eaten
up the three hunters in a minute; but such a
charge is rarely practiced by Indians, who,
although they are admirable in defensive war
fare, and even in certain kinds of offensive
movements, and although from their skill in
hiding they usually inflict much more loss
than they suffer when matched against white
troops, are yet very reluctant to make any
movement where the advantage gained must
be offset by considerable loss of life. The
three men thought they were surely doomed,
but being veteran frontiersmen and long in
ured to every kind of hardship and danger,
they set to work with cool resolution to make
as effective a defence as possible, to beat off
their antagonists if they might, and if this
proved impracticable, to sell their lives as
dearly as they could. Having tethered the
horses in a slight hollow, the only one which

276 Hunting the Grisly

offered any protection, each man crept out
to a point of the triangular brush patch and
lay down to await events.

In a very short while the Indians began
closing in on them, taking every advantage of
cover, and then, both from their side of the
river and from the opposite bank, opened a
perfect fusillade, wasting their cartridges with
a recklessness which Indians are apt to show
when excited. The hunters could hear the
hoarse commands of the chiefs, the war-
whoops and the taunts in broken English
which some of the warriors hurled at them.
Very soon all of their horses were killed, and
the brush was fairly riddled by the incessant
volleys; but the three men themselves, lying
flat on the ground and well concealed, were
not harmed. The more daring young war
riors then began to creep toward the hunters,
going stealthily from one piece of cover to
the next; and now the whites in turn opened
fire. They did not shoot recklessly, as did
their foes, but coolly and quietly, endeavor
ing to make each shot tell. Said Woody: "I
only fired seven times all day; I reckoned on
getting meat every time I pulled trigger."
They had an immense advantage over their
enemies, in that whereas they lay still and

In Cowboy Land 277

entirely concealed, the Indians of course had
to move from cover to cover in order to ap
proach, and so had at times to expose them
selves. When the whites fired at all they fired
at a man, whether moving or motionless, whom
they could clearly see, while the Indians could
only shoot at the smoke, which imperfectly
marked the position of their unseen foes. In
consequence the assailants speedily found that
it was a task of hopeless danger to try in such
a manner to close in on three plains veterans,
men of iron nerve and skilled in the use of
the rifle. Yet some of the more daring crept
up very close to the patch of brush, and one
actually got inside of it, and was killed among
the bedding that lay by the smoldering camp-
fire. The wounded and such of the dead as
'did not lie in too exposed positions were
promptly taken away by their comrades; but
seven bodies fell into the hands of the three
hunters. I asked Woody how many he him
self had killed. He said he could only be sure
of two that he got; one he shot in the head as
he peeped over a bush, and the other he shot
through the smoke as he attempted to rush in.
"My, how that Indian did yell," said Woody
retrospectively, "he was no great of a stoic."
After two or three hours of this deadly skir-

278 Hunting the Grisly

mishing, which resulted in nothing more seri
ous to the whites than in two of them being
slightly wounded, the Sioux became disheart
ened by the loss they were suffering and with
drew, confining themselves thereafter to a
long range and harmless fusillade. When it
was dark the three men crept out to the river
bed, and taking advantage of the pitchy night
broke through the circle of their foes; they
managed to reach the settlements without
further molestation, having lost everything
except their rifles.

For many years one of the most important
of the wilderness dwellers was the West Point
officer, and no man has played a greater part
than he in the wild warfare which opened
the regions beyond the Mississippi to white
settlement. Since 1879, there has been but
little regular Indian fighting in the North,
though there have been one or two very tedi
ous and wrearisome campaigns waged against
the Apaches in the South. Even in the North,
however, there have been occasional uprisings
which had to be quelled by the regular troops.

After my elk hunt in September, 1891, I
came out through the Yellowstone Park, as
I have elsewhere related, riding in company
with a surveyor of the Burlington and Quincy

In Cowboy Land 279

railroad, who was just coming in from his
summer's work. It was the first of October.
There had been a heavy snow-storm and the
snow was still falling. Riding a stout pony
each, and leading another packed with our
bedding, etc., we broke our way from the
upper to the middle geyser basin. Here wre
found a troop of the ist Cavalry camped,
under the command of old friends of mine,
Captain Frank Edwards and Lieutenant (now
Captain) John Pitcher. They gave us hay
for our horses and insisted upon our stopping
to lunch, with the ready hospitality always
shown by army officers. After lunch we be
gan exchanging stories. My traveling com
panion, the surveyor, had that spring per
formed a feat of note, going through one of
the canyons of the Big Horn for the first time.
He went with an old mining inspector, the
two of them dragging a cottonwood sledge
over the ice. The walls of the canyon are
so sheer and the water is so rough that it
can be 'descended only when the stream is
frozen. However, after six days' labor and
hardship the descent was accomplished; and
the surveyor, in concluding, described his
experience in going through the Crow Res
ervation.

a8o Hunting the Grisly

This turned the conversation upon Indians,
and it appeared that both of our hosts had
been actors in Indian scrapes which had
attracted my attention at the time they oc
curred, as they took place among tribes that I
knew and in a country which I had sometime
visited, either when hunting or when pur
chasing horses for the ranch. The first,
which occurred to Captain Edwards, hap
pened late in 1886, at the time when the Crow
Medicine Chief, Sword-Bearer, announced
himself as the Messiah of the Indian race,
during one of the usual epidemics of ghost
dancing. Sword-Bearer derived his name
from always wearing a medicine sword — that
is, a sabre painted red. He claimed to pos
sess magic power, and, thanks to the perform
ance of many dexterous feats of juggling, and
the lucky outcome of certain prophecies, he
deeply stirred the Indians, arousing the young
warriors in particular to the highest pitch of
excitement. They became sullen, began to
paint, and armed themselves; and the agent
and the settlers nearby grew so apprehensive
that the troops were ordered to go to the
reservation. A body of cavalry, including
Captain Edwards' troop, was accordingly
marched thither, and found the Crow war-

In Cowboy Land 281

riors, mounted on their war ponies and dressed
in their striking battle-garb, waiting upon
a hill.

The position of troops at the beginning of
such an affair is always peculiarly difficult.
The settlers round about are sure to clamor
bitterly against them, no matter what they
do, on the ground that they are not thorough
enough and are showing favor to the savages,
while on the other hand, even if they fight
purely in self-defence, a large number of
worthy but weak-minded sentimentalists in
the East are sure to shriek about their having
brutally attacke'd the Indians. The war
authorities always insist that they must not
fire the first shot under any circumstances,
and such were the orders at this time. The
Crows on the hilltop showed a sullen and
threatening front, and the troops advanced
slowly toward them and then halted for a
parley.

Meanwhile a mass of black thunder
clouds gathering on the horizon threatened
one of those cloudbursts of extreme severity
and suddenness so characteristic of the plains
country. While still trying to make arrange
ments for a parley, a horseman started out
of the Crow ranks and galloped headlong

282 Hunting the Grisly

down toward the troops. It was the medi
cine chief, Sword-Bearer. He was painted
and in his battle-dress, wearing his war-bonnet
of floating, trailing eagle feathers, \vhile the
plumes of the same bird were braided in the
mane and tail of his fiery little horse. On he
came at a gallop almost up to the troops and
then began to circle around them, calling and
singing and throwing his crimson sword into
the air, catching it by the hilt as it fell.
Twice he rode completely around the soldiers,
who stood in uncertainty, not knowing what
to make of his performance, and expressly
forbidden to shoot at him. Then paying no
further heed to them he rode back toward
the Crows. It appears that he had told them
that he would ride twice around the hostile
force, and by his incantations would call down
rain from heaven, which would make the
hearts of the white men like water, so that
they should go back to their homes. Sure
enough, while the arrangements for the par
ley were still going forward, down came the
cloudburst, drenching the command and mak
ing the ground on the hills in front nearly
impassable; and before it had dried a courier
arrived with orders to the troops to go back
to camp.

In Cowboy Land 283

This fulfilment of Sword-Bearer's prophecy
of course raised his reputation to the zenith
and the young men of the tribe prepared for
war, while the older chiefs, who more fully
realized the power of the whites, still hung
back. When the troops next appeared they
came upon the entire Crow force, the women
and children with their tepees being off to one
side beyond a little stream while almost all
the warriors of the tribe were gathered in
front.

Sword-Bearer then started to repeat his
former ride, to the intense irritation of the
soldiers. Luckily, however, this time some
of his young men could not be restrained.
They too began to ride near the troops, and
one of them was unable to refrain from firing
on Captain Edwards' troop, which was in the
van. This gave the soldiers their chance.
They instantly responded with a volley, and
Captain Edwards' troop charged. The fight
lasted but a minute or two, for Sword-Bearer
was struck by a bullet and fell, and as he had
boasted himself invulnerable, and promised
that his warrior should be invulnerable also
if they would follow him, the hearts of the
latter became as water and they broke in
every direction. One of the amusing, though

284 Hunting the Grisly

irritating, incidents of the affair was to see
the plumed and painted warriors race head
long for the camp, plunge into the stream,
wash off their war paint, and remove their
feathers; in another moment they would be
stolidly sitting on the ground, with their
blankets over their shoulders, rising to greet
the pursuing cavalry with unmoved compos
ure and calm assurances that they had always
been friendly and had much disapproved the
conduct of the young bucks who had just
been scattered on the field outside. It was
much to the credit of the discipline of the
army that no bloodshed followed the fight
proper. The loss to the whites was small.

The other incident, related by Lieutenant
Pitcher, took place, in 1890, near Tongue
River, in northern Wyoming. The command
with which he was serving was camped near
the Cheyenne Reservation. One day two
young Cheyenne bucks, met one of the gov
ernment herders, and promptly killed him —
in a sudden fit, half of ungovernable blood
lust, half of mere ferocious lightheartedness.
They then dragged his body into the brush
and left it. The disappearance of the herder
of course attracted attention, and a search
was organized by the cavalry. At first the

In Cowboy Land 285

Indians stoutly denied all knowledge of the
missing man ; but when it became evident that
the search party would shortly find him, two
or three of the chiefs joined them, and piloted
them to where the body lay; and acknowl
edged that he had been murdered by two
of their band, though at first they refused to
give their names. The commander of the
post demanded that the murderers be given
up.

The chiefs said that they were very sorry,
that this could not be done, but that they were
willing to pay over any reasonable number of
ponies to make amends for the death. This
offer was of course promptly refused, and the
commander notified them that if they did not
surrender the murderers by a certain time he
would hold the whole tribe responsible and
would promptly move out and attack them.
Upon this the chiefs, after holding full coun
sel with the tribe, told the commander that
they had no power to surrender the murder
ers, but that the latter had said that sooner
than see their tribe involved in a hopeless
struggle they would of their own accord come
in and meet the troops anywhere the latter
chose to appoint, and die fighting. To this
the commander responded: "All right; let

286 Hunting the Grisly

them come into the agency in half an hour."
The chiefs acquiesced, and withdrew.

Immediately the Indians sent mounted
messengers at speed from camp to camp, sum
moning all their people to witness the act of
fierce self-doom; and soon the entire tribe of
Cheyennes, many of them having their faces
blackened in token of mourning, moved down
and took up a position on the hillside close
to the agency. At the appointed hour both
young men appeared in their handsome war
dress, galloped to the top of the hill near
the encampment, and deliberately opened fire
on the troops. The latter merely fired a few
shots to keep the young desperadoes off, while
Lieutenant Pitcher and a score of cavalrymen
left camp to make a circle and drive them in;
they did not wish to hurt them, but to capture
and give them over to the Indians, so that the
latter might be forced themselves to inflict
the punishment. However, they were unable
to accomplish their purpose; one of the young
braves went straight at them, firing his rifle
and wounding the horse of one of the cavalry
men, so that, simply in self-defence, the lat
ter had to fire a volley, which laid low the
assailant; the other, his horse having been
shot, was killed in the brush, fighting to the

In Cowboy Land 287

last. All the while, from the moment the two
doomed braves appeared until they fell, the
Cheyennes on the hillside had been steadily
singing the death chant. When the young
men had both died, and had thus averted the
fate which their misdeeds would else have
brought upon the tribe, the warriors took their
bodies and bore them away for burial honors,
the soldiers looking on in silence. Where
the slain men were buried the whites never
knew; but all that night they listened to the
dismal wailing of the dirges with which the
tribesmen celebrated their gloomy funeral
rites.

Frontiersman are not, as a rule, apt to be
very superstitious. They lead lives too hard
and practical, and have too little imagi
nation in things spiritual and supernatural.
I have heard but few ghost stories while
living on the frontier, and these few were
of a perfectly commonplace and conventional
type.

But I once listened to a goblin story which
rather impressed me. It was told by a grisled,
weatherbeaten old mountain hunter, named
Bauman, who was born and had passed all his
life on the frontier. He must have believed
what he said, for he could hardly repress a

288 Hunting the Grisly

shudder at certain points of the tale; but he
was of German ancestry, and in childhood
had doubtless been saturated with all kinds
of ghost and goblin lore, so that many fear
some superstitions were latent in his mind;
besides, he knew well the stories told by the
Indian medicine men in their winter carnps,
of the snow-walkers, and the spectres, and
the formless evil beings that haunt the forest
depths, and dog and waylay the lonely wan
derer who after nightfall passes through the
regions where they lurk; and it may be that
when overcome by the horror of the fate that
befell his friend, and when oppressed by the
awful dread of the unknown, he grew to at
tribute, both at the time and still more in
remembrance, weird and elfin traits to what
was merely some abnormally wicked and cun
ning wild beast; but whether this was so or
not, no man can say.

When the event occurred Bauman was still
a young man, and was trapping with a part
ner among the mountains dividing the forks
of the Salmon from the head of Wisdom
River. Not having had much luck, he and
his partner determined to go up into a par
ticularly wild and lonely pass through which
ran a small stream said to contain many

In Cowboy Land 289

beaver. The pass had an evil reputation be
cause the year before a solitary hunter who
had wandered into it was there slain, seem
ingly by a wild beast, the half-eaten remains
being afterward found by some mining pro
spectors who had passed his camp only the
night before.

The memory of this event, however,
weighed very lightly with the two trap
pers, who were as adventurous and hardy as
others of their kind. They took their two
lean mountain ponies to the foot of the pass,
where they left them in an open beaver
meadow, the rocky timber-clad ground being
from thence onward impracticable for horses.
They then struck out on foot through the vast,
gloomy forest, and in about four hours reached
a little open glade where they concluded to
camp, as signs of game were plenty.

There was still an hour or two of daylight
left, and after building a brush lean-to and
throwing down and opening their packs, they
started up stream. The country was very
dense and hard to travel through, as there
was much down timber, although here and
there the sombre woodland was broken by
small glades of mountain grass.

At dusk they again reached camp. The

VOL. III. 13

29° Hunting the Grisly

glade in which it was pitched was not many
yards wide, the tall, close-set pines and firs
rising round it like a wall. On one side was
a little stream, beyond which rose the steep
mountain-slopes, covered with the unbroken
growth of the evergreen forest.

They were surprised to find that during their
short absence something, apparently a bear,
had visited camp, and had rummaged about
among their things, scattering the contents of
their packs, and in sheer wantonness destroy
ing their lean-to. The footprints of the beast
were quite plain, but at first they paid no par
ticular heed to them, busying themselves with
rebuilding the lean-to, laying out their beds
and stores, and lighting the fire.

While Bauman was making ready supper,
it being already dark, his companion be
gan to examine the tracks more closely, and
soon took a brand from the fire to follow
them up, where the intruder had walked along
a game trail after leaving the camp. When
the brand flickered out, he returned and took
another, repeating his inspection of the foot
prints very closely. Coming back to the fire,
he stood by it a minute or two, peering out
into the darkness, and suddenly remarked:
"Bauman, that bear has been walking on two

In Cowboy Land 291

legs." Bauman laughed at this, but his part
ner insisted that he was right, and upon again
examining the tracks with a torch, they cer
tainly did seem to be made by but two paws,
or feet. However, it was too dark to make
sure. After discussing whether the footprints
could possibly be those of a human being,
and coming to the conclusion that they could
not be, the two men rolled up in their blank
ets, and went to sleep under the lean-to.

At midnight Bauman was awakened by some
noise, and sat up in his blankets. As he did
so his nostrils were struck by a strong, wild-
beast odor, and he caught the loom of a
great body in the darkness at the mouth of
the lean-to.

Grasping his rifle, he fired at the vague,
threatening shadow, but must have missed,
for immediately afterward he heard the
smashing of the underwood as the thing,
whatever it was, rushed off into the impene
trable blackness of the forest and the night.

After this the two men slept but little, sit
ting up by the rekindled fire, but they heard
nothing more. In the morning they started
out to look at the few traps they had set the
previous evening and to put out new ones.
By an unspoken agreement they kept to-

Hunting the Grisly

gether all day, and returned to camp toward
evening.

On nearing it they saw, hardly to their as
tonishment, that the lean-to had been again
torn down. The visitor of the preceding day
had returned, and in wanton malice had tossed
about their camp kit and bedding, and de
stroyed the shanty. The ground was marked
up by its tracks, and on leaving the camp it
had gone along the soft earth by the brook,
where the footprints were as plain as if on
snow, and, after a careful scrutiny of the trail,
it certainly did seem as if, whatever the thing
was, it had walked off on but two legs.

The men, thoroughly uneasy, gathered a
great heap of dead logs, and kept up a roar
ing fire throughout the night, one or the other
sitting on guard most of the time. About
midnight the thing came down through the
forest opposite, across the brook, and stayed
there on the hillside for nearly an hour. They
could hear the branches crackle as it moved
about, and several times it uttered a harsh,
grating, long-drawn moan, a peculiarly sin
ister sound. Yet it did not venture near the
fire.

In the morning the two trappers, after dis
cussing the strange events of the last thirty-

In Cowboy Land 293

six hours, decided that they would shoulder
their packs and leave the valley that after
noon. They were the more ready to do this
because in spite of seeing a good deal of game
sign they had caught very little fur. How
ever, it was necessary first to go along the
line of their traps and gather them, and this
they started out to do.

All the morning they kept together, pick
ing up trap after trap, each one empty. On
first leaving camp they had the disagreeable
sensation of being followed. In the dense
spruce thickets they occasionally heard a
branch snap after they had passed; and now
and then there were slight rustling noises
among the small pines to one side of them.

At noon they were back within a couple of
miles of camp. In the high, bright sunlight
their fears seemed absurd to the two armed
men, accustomed as they were, through long
years of lonely wandering in the wilderness,
to face every kind of danger from man, brute,
or element. There were still three beaver
traps to collect from a little pond in a wide
ravine near by. Bauman volunteered to gath
er these and bring them in, while his com
panion went ahead to camp to make ready
the packs.

294 Hunting the Grisly

On reaching the pond Bauman found three
beaver in the traps, one of which had been
pulled loose and carried into a beaver house.
He took several hours in securing and pre
paring the beaver, and when he started home
ward he marked with some uneasiness how
low the sun was getting. As he hurried to
ward camp, under the tall trees, the silence
and desolation of the forest weighed on him.
His feet made no sound on the pine needles,
and the slanting sun rays, striking through
among the straight trunks, made a gray twi
light in which objects at a distance glimmered
indistinctly. There was nothing to break the
ghostly stillness which, when there is no
breeze, always broods over these sombre pri
meval forests.

At last he came to the edge of the little
glade where the camp lay, and shouted as he
approached it, but got no answer. The camp
fire had gone out, though the thin blue smoke
was still curling upward. Near it lay the
packs, wrapped and arranged. At first Bau
man could see nobody; nor did he receive an
answer to his call. Stepping forward he
again shouted, and as he did so his eye fell
on the body of his friend, stretched beside the
trunk of a great fallen spruce. Rushing to-

In Cowboy Land 295

ward it the horrified trapper found that the
body was still warm, but that the neck was
broken, while there were four great fang
marks in the throat.

The footprints of the unknown beast-crea
ture, printed deep in the soft soil, told the
whole story.

The unfortunate man, having finished his
packing, had sat down on the spruce log with
his face to the fire, and his back to the dense
woods, to wait for his companion. While
thus waiting, his monstrous assailant, which
must have been lurking nearby in the woods,
waiting for a chance to catch one of the ad
venturers unprepared, came silently up from
behind, walking with long, noiseless steps, and
seemingly still on two legs. Evidently un
heard, it reached the man, and broke his neck
by wrenching his head back with its forepaws,
while it buried its teeth in his throat. It had
not eaten the body, but apparently had romped
and gamboled round it in uncouth, ferocious
glee, occasionally rolling over and over it;
and had then fled back into the soundless
depths of the woods.

Bauman, utterly unnerved, and believing
that the creature with which he had to deal
was something either half human or half

296 Hunting the Grisly

devil, some great goblin-beast, abandoned
everything but his rifle and struck off at speed
down the pass, not halting until he reached
the beaver meadows where the hobbled ponies
were still grazing: Mounting, he rode on
ward through the night, until far beyond the
reach of pursuit.

END OP VOLUME THREE

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