and a blizzard covers them up in winter.  Then, too, there are the cattle rustlers that, in the course of a season, often get away with hundreds of them, change the brand and send them away to their confederates.  Many of them are stung by rattlesnakes.  The wolves, in a hard winter, pull down a lot of the cows, and sometimes, though not so often, the grizzlies get after them.  Take all these things into account, figure up the payroll for the help, the freight charges on your shipments, and it’s no wonder that many a man finds a balance on the wrong side of the ledger in lean seasons.  No, it isn’t all ’peaches and cream’ in ranching.”

“You spoke of grizzlies a minute ago,” said Dick, whose sporting blood had tingled at mention of the name.  “Are there many of those fellows around here?”

“Not so many as there used to be,” replied Mr. Melton.  “They’re being pushed further and further north as the country gets more settled.  Still there are enough around to make it advisable to keep your eye peeled for trouble whenever you get a little way further up in the mountains.  Every once in a while we find the body of a steer partly eaten, and we can always tell when a grizzly has pulled it down.”

“How’s that?” asked Tom.

“By the way he covers it up,” answered Melton.  “He always heaps up a pile of brush or dried grass over the carcass.  I reckon it’s his sign manual to tell other animals who may be skulking around that it’s his kill, and that there’ll be trouble if any of them go monkeying around it.  At any rate, they don’t fool with it.  They know he’s king in these parts.  Wherever the grizzly sits is the head of the table.”

“Are they really as savage as they are cracked up to be?” asked Bert.  “If so, it must be great sport hunting them.”

“Are they savage?” echoed their host pityingly.  “Say, son, there’s nothing on four feet as full of hate and poison, unless perhaps a gorilla.  And if it ever came to a tussle between them two, my money would go on the grizzly every time.

“As to it’s being great sport hunting them, it’s the grizzly that usually does the hunting.  For myself, I haven’t any ambition that way.  I’m perfectly willing to give him his full half of the road whenever we meet.  And we won’t meet at all, if I see him first.  I’ve had more than one tussle with an old silver-tip, and I’ve got a few hides up at the house to serve as reminders.  But it’s always been when it was more dangerous to run than it was to stay and fight it out.  There ain’t many things on four feet or two that I’d go far out of my way to keep from meeting, but when it comes to a grizzly I haven’t any pride at all.  There are less exciting forms of amusement.  No, my boy, if you’re thinking of tackling a grizzly, take a fool’s advice and don’t do it.”

“But a bullet in the right place would stop them as surely as it would anything else, I should think,” ventured Tom.