“One has to hunt and kill and hunt and kill for years before he discovers the real pleasure in big game stalking,” he said slowly, looking into the fire.  “And when he comes down to that real pleasure, the part of it that absorbs him heart and soul, he finds that after all the big thrill isn’t in killing, but in letting live.  I want this grizzly, and I’m going to have him.  I won’t leave the mountains until I kill him.  But, on the other hand, we could have killed two other bears to-day, and I didn’t take a shot.  I’m learning the game, Bruce—­I’m beginning to taste the real pleasure of hunting.  And when one hunts in the right way one learns facts.  You needn’t worry.  I’m going to put only facts in what I write.”

Suddenly he turned and looked at Bruce.

“What were some of the ‘fool things’ you read in those books?” he asked.

Bruce blew out a cloud of smoke reflectively.

“What made me maddest,” he said, “was what those writer fellows said about bears havin’ ‘marks.’  Good Lord, accordin’ to what they said all a bear has to do is stretch ’imself up, put a mark on a tree, and that country is his’n until a bigger bear comes along an’ licks ’im.  In one book I remember where a grizzly rolled a log up under a tree so he could stand on it an’ put his mark above another grizzly’s mark.  Think of that!

“No bear makes a mark that means anything.  I’ve seen grizzlies bite hunks out o’ trees an’ scratch ’em just as a cat might, an’ in the summer when they get itchy an’ begin to lose their hair they stand up an’ rub against trees.  They rub because they itch an’ not because they’re leavin’ their cards for other bears.  Caribou an’ moose an’ deer do the same thing to get the velvet off their horns.

“Them same writers think every grizzly has his own range, an’ they don’t—­not by a long shot they don’t!  I’ve seen eight full-grown grizzlies feedin’ on the same slide!  You remember, two years ago, we shot four grizzlies in a little valley that wasn’t a mile long.  Now an’ then there’s a boss among grizzlies, like this fellow we’re after, but even he ain’t got his range alone.  I’ll bet there’s twenty other bears in these two valleys!  An’ that natcherlist I had two years ago couldn’t tell a grizzly’s track from a black bear’s track, an so ’elp me if he knew what a cinnamon was!”

He took his pipe from his mouth and spat truculently into the fire, and Langdon knew that other things were coming.  His richest hours were those when the usually silent Bruce fell into these moods.

“A cinnamon!” he growled.  “Think of that, Jimmy—­he thought there were such a thing as a cinnamon bear!  An’ when I told him there wasn’t, an’ that the cinnamon bear you read about is a black or a grizzly of a cinnamon colour, he laughed at me—­an’ there I was born an’ brung up among bears!  His eyes fair popped when I told him about the colour o’ bears, an’ he thought I was feedin’ him rope.  I figgered afterward mebby that was why he sent me the books.  He wanted to show me he was right.