they were just ahead of us.  I never climbed so hard and fast in my life.  We were all tuckered out when we reached the top of the ridge.  Then to our great disappointment we did not hear the hounds.  Mounting we rode along the crest of this wooded ridge toward the western end, which was considerably higher.  Once on a bare patch of ground we saw where the grizzly had passed.  The big, round tracks, toeing in a little, made a chill go over me.  No doubt of its being a silvertip!

We climbed and rode to the high point, and coming out upon the summit of the mountain we all heard the deep, hoarse baying of the pack.  They were in the canyon down a bare grassy slope and over a wooded bench at our feet.  Teague yelled as he spurred down.  R.C. rode hard in his tracks.

But my horse was new to this bear chasing.  He was mettlesome, and he did not want to do what I wanted.  When I jabbed the spurs into his flanks he nearly bucked me off.  I was looking for a soft place to light when he quit.  Long before I got down that open slope Teague and R.C. had disappeared.  I had to follow their tracks.  This I did at a gallop, but now and then lost the tracks, and had to haul in to find them.  If I could have heard the hounds from there I would have gone on anyway.  But once down in the jack-pines I could hear neither yell or bay.  The pines were small, close together, and tough.  I hurt my hands, scratched my face, barked my knees.  The horse had a habit of suddenly deciding to go the way he liked instead of the way I guided him, and when he plunged between saplings too close together to permit us both to go through, it was exceedingly hard on me.  I was worked into a frenzy.  Suppose R.C. should come face to face with that old grizzly and fail to kill him!  That was the reason for my desperate hurry.  I got a crack on the head that nearly blinded me.  My horse grew hot and began to run in every little open space.  He could scarcely be held in.  And I, with the blood hot in me too, did not hold him hard enough.

It seemed miles across that wooded bench.  But at last I reached another slope.  Coming out upon a canyon rim I heard R.C. and Teague yelling, and I heard the hounds fighting the grizzly.  He was growling and threshing about far below.  I had missed the tracks made by Teague and my brother, and it was necessary to find them.  That slope looked impassable.  I rode back along the rim, then forward.  Finally I found where the ground was plowed deep and here I headed my horse.  He had been used to smooth roads and he could not take these jumps.  I went forward on his neck.  But I hung on and spurred him hard.  The mad spirit of that chase had gotten into him too.  All the time I could hear the fierce baying and yelping of the hounds, and occasionally I heard a savage bawl from the bear.  I literally plunged, slid, broke a way down that mountain slope, riding all the time, before I discovered the footprints of Teague and R.C.  They had walked, leading their