At any rate, cases of wanton assaults by grislies are altogether out of the common.  The ordinary hunter may live out his whole life in the wilderness and never know aught of a bear attacking a man unprovoked; and the great majority of bears are shot under circumstances of no special excitement, as they either make no fight at all, or, if they do fight, are killed before there is any risk of their doing damage.  If surprised on the plains, at some distance from timber or from badly broken ground, it is no uncommon feat for a single horseman to kill them with a revolver.  Twice of late years it has been performed in the neighborhood of my ranch.  In both instances the men were not hunters out after game, but simply cowboys, riding over the range in early morning in pursuance of their ordinary duties among the cattle.  I knew both men and have worked with them on the round-up.  Like most cowboys, they carried 44-calibre Colt revolvers, and were accustomed to and fairly expert in their use, and they were mounted on ordinary cow-ponies—­quick, wiry, plucky little beasts.  In one case the bear was seen from quite a distance, lounging across a broad table-land.  The cowboy, by taking advantage of a winding and rather shallow coulie, got quite close to him.  He then scrambled out of the coulie, put spurs to his pony, and raced up to within fifty yards of the astonished bear ere the latter quite understood what it was that was running at him through the gray dawn.  He made no attempt at fight, but ran at top speed towards a clump of brush not far off at the head of a creek.  Before he could reach it, however, the galloping horsemen was alongside, and fired three shots into his broad back.  He did not turn, but ran on into the bushes and then fell over and died.

In the other case the cowboy, a Texan, was mounted on a good cutting pony, a spirited, handy, agile little animal, but excitable, and with a habit of dancing, which rendered it difficult to shoot from its back.  The man was with the round-up wagon, and had been sent off by himself to make a circle through some low, barren buttes, where it was not thought more than a few head of stock would be found.  On rounding the corner of a small washout he almost ran over a bear which was feeding on the carcass of a steer that had died in an alkali hole.  After a moment of stunned surprise the bear hurled himself at the intruder with furious impetuosity; while the cowboy, wheeling his horse on its haunches and dashing in the spurs, carried it just clear of his assailant’s headlong rush.  After a few springs he reined in and once more wheeled half round, having drawn his revolver, only to find the bear again charging and almost on him.  This time he fired into it, near the joining of the neck and shoulder, the bullet going downwards into the chest hollow; and again by a quick dash to one side he just avoided the rush of the beast and the sweep of its mighty forepaw.  The bear then halted for a minute, and he rode close by it at a