hurried shots disabled her and caused her to tumble over a cut bank where she was easily finished.  They found that she had been lying directly across the game trail, on a smooth well beaten patch of bare earth, which looked as if it had been dug up, refilled, and trampled down.  Looking curiously at this patch they saw a bit of hide only partially covered at one end; digging down they found the body of a well grown grisly cub.  Its skull had been crushed, and the brains licked out, and there were signs of other injuries.  The hunters pondered long over this strange discovery, and hazarded many guesses as to its meaning.  At last they decided that probably the cub had been killed, and its brains eaten out, either by some old male-grisly or by a cougar, that the mother had returned and driven away the murderer, and that she had then buried the body and lain above it, waiting to wreak her vengeance on the first passer-by.

Old Tazewell Woody, during his thirty years’ life as a hunter in the Rockies and on the great plains, killed very many grislies.  He always exercised much caution in dealing with them; and, as it happened, he was by some suitable tree in almost every case when he was charged.  He would accordingly climb the tree (a practice of which I do not approve however); and the bear would look up at him and pass on without stopping.  Once, when he was hunting in the mountains with a companion, the latter, who was down in a valley, while Woody was on the hill-side, shot at a bear.  The first thing Woody knew the wounded grisly, running up-hill, was almost on him from behind.  As he turned it seized his rifle in its jaws.  He wrenched the rifle round, while the bear still gripped it, and pulled trigger, sending a bullet into its shoulder; whereupon it struck him with its paw, and knocked him over the rocks.  By good luck he fell in a snow bank and was not hurt in the least.  Meanwhile the bear went on and they never got it.

Once he had an experience with a bear which showed a very curious mixture of rashness and cowardice.  He and a companion were camped in a little tepee or wigwam, with a bright fire in front of it, lighting up the night.  There was an inch of snow on the ground.  Just after they went to bed a grisly came close to camp.  Their dog rushed out and they could hear it bark round in the darkness for nearly an hour; then the bear drove it off and came right into camp.  It went close to the fire, picking up the scraps of meat and bread, pulled a haunch of venison down from a tree, and passed and repassed in front of the tepee, paying no heed whatever to the two men, who crouched in the doorway talking to one another.  Once it passed so close that Woody could almost have touched it.  Finally his companion fired into it, and off it ran, badly wounded, without an attempt at retaliation.  Next morning they followed its tracks in the snow, and found it a quarter or a mile away.  It was near a pine and had buried itself under the loose earth, pine needles, and snow; Woody’s companion almost walked over it, and putting his rifle to its ear blew out its brains.