The herders, mostly Mexicans, Basques and Portuguese, found it heart-breaking to gather the sheep after Pinto had scattered them, and moreover they were mortally afraid of the big Grizzly and took to roosting on platforms in the trees instead of sleeping in their tents at night.  Worse than all else, the bear killed their dogs.  The men were instructed by the boss of the camp to let the bear alone and keep out of his way, as they were hired to herd sheep and not to fight bears, but the dogs could not be made to understand such instructions and persisted in trying to protect their woolly wards.

The owners were accustomed to losing a few hundred sheep on Pine Mountain every summer, and figured the loss in the fixed charges, but when Pinto joined the ursine band that followed the flocks for a living, the loss became serious and worried the majordomo at the home camp.  So another reward was offered for the Grizzly’s scalp and the herders were instructed to notify the Harris boys at San Emigdio whenever the bear raided their flocks.

Here is where Gleason’s part of the story begins.  The bear attacked a band of sheep one afternoon, killed four and stampeded the Mexican herder, who ran down the mountain to the camp of the Harris boys, good hunters who had been engaged by the majordomo to do up Old Pinto.  Two of the Harris boys and another man went up to the scene of the raid, carrying their rifles, blankets and some boards with which to construct a platform.  They selected a pine tree and built a platform across the lower limbs about twenty feet from the ground.  When the platform was nearly completed, two of the men left the tree and went to where they had dropped their blankets and guns, about a hundred yards away.  One picked up the blankets and the other took the three rifles and started back toward the tree, where the third man was still tinkering the platform.

The sun had set, but it was still twilight, and none of the party dreamed of seeing the bear at that time, but within forty yards of the tree sat Old Pinto, his head cocked to one side, watching the man in the tree with much evident interest.  Pinto had returned to his muttons, but found the proceedings of the man up the tree so interesting that he was letting his supper wait.

[Illustration:  Watching the Man in the Tree.]

The man carrying the blankets dropped them and seized a heavy express rifle that some Englishman had left in the country.  The other man dropped the extra gun and swung a Winchester 45-70 to his shoulder.  The express cracked first, and the hollow-pointed ball struck Pinto under the shoulder.  The 45-70 bullet struck a little lower and made havoc of the bear’s liver.  The shock knocked the bear off his pins, but he recovered and ran into a thicket of scrub oak.  The thicket was impenetrable to a man, and there was no man present who wanted to penetrate it in the wake of a wounded Grizzly.