“One day I went out with a man named Willis, who was a good hunter, and in the hills back of Sonora we found plenty of bear sign.  In fact we could get through the thick brush and chaparral only on the trails made by bears, and we had to go carefully for fear of running upon a Grizzly at close quarters.  Although it was evident that we were in a bear country, we hadn’t seen anything to shoot at when we emerged from the brush into an open space about fifty yards in diameter.

“Willis said that he was sure bears were close around us, if we could only see them, and I proposed to climb a tree on the other side of the clearing and get a good view of the surrounding thickets.  If I should see bears I was to make a noise and try to scare them out of their hiding places.

“I started across the opening, but before I reached the tree I saw a huge Grizzly coming toward me through the brush.  He looked much larger and uglier than I had expected, and it struck me that the proper thing for me was to get into that tree before shooting.  I got to the tree all right enough, but found that I couldn’t climb it and take my rifle up with me.  Willis saw my difficulty and shouted to me that I couldn’t make it, and so I abandoned the attempt and ran back toward him.

“The bear was following me, and Willis started back into the brush.  I called to him not to do that, but to stand in the open and wait for me.  He halted, and when I got alongside we both turned and raised our rifles.  When the bear saw that we were standing our ground, he stopped, looked at us a moment and then turned and shuffled back into the brush.  He was so big and looked so formidable that we concluded to let him go unmolested, rather relieved, in fact, that we were let out of the scrape so easily.

“We made our way back to camp with some caution and decided that we would get up a crowd and go bear hunting the next day.  When we told our adventure, Green was very hilarious at my expense and kept reminding me of the brave things I had said coming across the plains.  He was so everlastingly tickled with his joke that he sat up all that night to guy me about my running away from a bear.  I told him I would show him all the bears he wanted to see the next day, and give him a chance to try his own nerves.

“The next day five of us went out to look for bears, and we struck them thick before we got to the place where we had found so much sign.  Willis and I took the upper side of a patch of brush, and Green and the other two skirted the lower edge.  An old Grizzly and two cubs, startled by some noise made by the other fellows, jumped out of the brush on our side, and we fired at them.  My bullet struck one near the shoulder, and Willis hit the dam in the belly.  They all turned and ran down through the brush toward the rest of the crowd, and got out of our range.