somewhat noted grizzly that had killed his man, had been recently on
Squaw Flat, and had prowled about an old cabin at night, sorting over
the garbage heap and pile of tin cans at the door, but when the
expedition passed the cabin no fresh sign was found, and the tracks on
Squaw Flat were at least a week old.
The first camp was in a clump of chincapin brush at Stone Corral.
There were bear tracks in the soft ground at the edge of the creek,
which induced the hunters to spend two days in prospecting that part
of the country. One of the proposed plans for capturing the bear was
to run him out of the rocks and brush to some reasonably open bit of
country like Squaw Flat or one of the small level patches near camp
and lasso him, but the impracticable nature of that scheme was soon
demonstrated. On the next day after making camp the Examiner's own
bear catcher went out on a nervous black horse called "Nig" to find
out where the Stone Corral bear was spending the summer and
incidentally to get some venison. The Stone Corral bear was there or
thereabouts beyond any doubt. He ran the correspondent out of the
brush and showed a perverse disposition to do all the hunting himself.
"Nig" would not stand to let his rider take a shot, but when the bear
gave notice of his presence by growling and smashing down the brush
twenty yards away, he wheeled and bolted towards camp. Near the camp
Dad was found rounding up the other horses, who had just been scared
from their pasturage by another wandering bear. It was clear that not
a horse in the outfit could be ridden to within roping distance of a
bear, and it is doubtful if three horses fit for such a job could be
found in the country. Some years ago the ranchmen and vaqueros
frequently caught bears with a rope, but even then it was difficult to
train horses to the work, and only one horse out of a hundred could be
cured of his instinctive dread of a grizzly.
It was clear also that there were some defects in the plan of driving
the Stone Corral bear out of the brush, chief of which was the bear's
inconsiderate desire to do the driving himself. As the hunting would
have to be done afoot, the prospects incident to an attempt to round
up a big grizzly among the rocks and chaparral were not peculiarly
alluring. Trapping was the only other method that could be suggested,
but the absence of any heavy timber would make that difficult.
The Stone Corral is a singular arrangement of huge sandstone ledges on
the slope of a mountain, forming a rough inclosure about a quarter of
a mile wide and three or four times as long. The country is very
rugged and broken for miles around, and except along the creek and on
the trail a horse cannot be ridden through it. The problem of how to
catch a bear in such a place was not solved, because the bear cut
short its consideration by marching past the camp and lumbering down
the creek bed toward the Alder Creek Canyon and the Sespe country. The
correspondent stood upon the sandstone ledge as he went by, and yelled
at him, but he did not quicken his pace.
When it became evident that the bear was bound for the Sespe, the
horses were saddled. Balaam the Burro was concealed under a
mountainous pack, and the march was resumed over the Alder Creek trail
to the deep gorge through which the Sespe River runs. The man who made
the Alder Creek trail was not born to build roads. He laid it out
right over the top of a high and steep mountain, when by making a
slight detour, he could have avoided a difficult and unnecessary
climb. In the broiling hot sun of a breezeless day in June, the march
over the mountains was hard on men and horses, and the pace was
necessarily slow.
The heat coaxed the rattlesnakes out of their holes, and the angry hum
of their rattles was an almost incessant accompaniment to the hoof
beats of the horses. Where the trail wound along a steep slope,
affording but slight foothold for an animal, a more than unusually
strenuous and insistent singing of a snake, disturbed from his sunny
siesta, caused Balaam to jump aside. Balaam avoided the snake, but he
lost his balance and rolled down the slope, heels in the air and pack
underneath. The acrobatic feats achieved by Balaam in his struggles to
regain his footing were watched by an admiring and solicitous
audience, and when he cleverly took advantage of the slight
obstruction offered by a manzanita bush, and got safely upon his feet,
he was loudly applauded. The deep solicitude of the party for the
safety of Balaam and his pack was accounted for when he scrambled
back to the trail and gravely walked up to the packer to have his pack
straightened. Every man anxiously felt of the pack, and heaved a sigh
of relief. The bottles containing O. P. S., antidote for snake bite,
were not broken, but it was a narrow escape.
"Great Beeswax!" said the Doctor, "suppose those bottles had been
smashed and then some one of us should go to work and bite himself
with a snake! Wouldn't that be a fix?"
"Dogdurn if it don't make my blood run cold to think of it," said Dad.
Everybody's blood seemed to be congealing, and as the pack was loose
and the antidote accessible, an ounce of prevention was administered
to each man, and Balaam was rewarded for his timely agility with a
handful of sugar.
No more accidents occurred, and late in the afternoon the cavalcade
slid, coasted and scrambled down the last steep hill into the Sespe
Canyon, where a camp was made under an immense oak beside a deep,
rocky pool. That evening, around the camp-fire, some strange bear
stories were evolved from either the memories or imagination of the
hunters.
In the morning the search for bear signs was resumed and prosecuted
until noon without success. Dad was lured by the swarms of trout in
the stream, and went fishing. Dad is not a scientific fly fisherman.
His favorite method is to select a shady nook on the bank, sit down
with his back against a rock, tie a sinker to a large and gaudy fly,
and angle on the bottom for the biggest trout he can see. He generally
carries a book in his pocket, and when the trout remains unresponsive
to the allurements of the gaudy fly, he fastens his rod to a bush and
reads until he falls asleep.
In the afternoon one of the party went out over a long, brushy ridge,
and the correspondent pushed on down the gorge in search of bear
signs. All the bear tracks led up toward the Hot Springs Canyon,
indicating that the grizzlies had begun their annual migration to the
Alamo, Frazier and Pine mountains, where large bands of sheep are
herded through the summer. Some of the tracks were large and fresh,
and a person might come upon a bear at any time in the bottom of the
canyon. Preparations were made for following the bears and directions
given for an early start in the morning. The Doctor recollected that
he had important business in Santa Paula that required his immediate
attention, and he wouldn't have time to follow the grizzlies through
the rugged passes of the mountains. Accordingly, he and Dad decided to
remain in the Sespe camp a day or two, enjoy the fishing, and then
return to Santa Paula, and the bear hunting party that saddled up and
struck out on the trail of the grizzly in the morning was reduced to
three.
The trail led through the Hot Springs Canyon, where boiling hot
sulphur water flows out of the ground in a stream large enough to
sensibly affect the temperature of the Sespe River, into which it
runs. This canyon was formerly a beautiful camping spot, and was
resorted to by many persons who believed that bathing in sulphur water
would restore their health, but about three years ago a cloudburst
uprooted all the trees and converted the green cienaga into a rocky
desolate flat, as barren and unattractive as the sharp, treeless peaks
surrounding the canyon. A few mountain sheep inhabit the mountains
about the Hot Springs, and occasionally one is seen standing upon some
high and inaccessible cliff, but it is very seldom that a hunter
succeeds in getting a pair of big horns.
The next camp was on the Piru Creek, where it runs through the Mutaw
ranch. One of the most promising mining districts in this part of the
State takes its name from the Piru, and in years gone by a great deal
of gold was taken from the diggings along the stream. One of the most
successful miners was Mike Brannan, whose cabins and mining appliances
lie unused and decaying about six miles from the place where the
expedition camped.
From the camp on the Mutaw the expedition followed Piru Creek down to
Lockwood, and the latter up to the divide between Lockwood Valley and
the Cuddy ranch at the foot of Mount Pinos, called Sawmill Mountain by
the settlers. The mountain is about 10,000 feet high, and is covered
with heavy pine timber. Ever since Haggin & Carr's sheep have been on
the mountain, the bears from forty miles around have made annual
marauding expeditions, and kept the herders on the jump all the
summer. The first band of sheep and the Examiner expedition arrived at
the old Sawmill simultaneously this year, and the Basque who was
herding the band, having a very lively sense of the danger of his
situation, pitched his tent close to the camp, where he would be under
the protection of three rifles. The Basque had never been on the
mountain before, but he had heard about the bears and their audacious
raids, and he was not at all enamored of his job. When the campfires
were started, and the forest became an enclosing wall of gloom, behind
which lurked all the mysteries and menaces of the mountains, the
Basque came shyly into camp, bringing a shoulder of mutton with which
to establish friendly relations, and under the mellowing influence of
a glass of something hot he became confidential and as communicative
as his broken jargon of French and California Spanish would permit.
He had come to the mountain reluctantly, and having been told about
the herder whose hand was torn off by a grizzly last year, he was
still more unwilling to remain. He would stay as long as the Examiner
party remained near him, but when the hunters went away he proposed to
quit and hasten back to the plains, where he would have nothing worse
than the coyotes to encounter. Every night after that, so long as the
hunters were in that camp, the Basque came and sat at the fire until
bedtime, talking about _los osos_, and when the grass and water gave
out and the expedition was obliged to move camp about two miles, the
gentle shepherd packed his blankets over the trail to Bakersfield,
leaving his flock in the care of a leathery skinned bear-hardened
Mexican.
The bears were later this year than usual in coming to the mountain,
probably because the warm weather was longer delayed, and for many
days the hunters scanned the trails in the canyons in vain for the
footprints of grizzlies. The first indication of their arrival was
given in a somewhat startling way to the correspondent one evening as
he was slowly toiling through a deep, rocky ravine back to camp, after
a weary tramp over the foothills of the big mountain.
The sun had set and the bottom of the ravine was dark as night. The
belated searcher for bear signs skirted a dense willow thicket, and
brushed against the bushes with his elbow. "Woof! Woof!" snorted a
bear within ten feet of him, invisible in the thicket. His heart
thumped and his rifle lock clicked, together, and which sound was the
louder he could not tell. For a few seconds he stood at the edge of
the thicket with his rifle ready, expecting the rush of the bear, but
the animal was not in a warlike mood and did not rush, and the hunter
cautiously backed away about twenty yards up the steep side of the
ravine. The cracking of brush indicated that bruin was moving in the
thicket, but nothing could be seen in the gathering gloom. Two or
three large rocks rolled down into the willows started the bear out on
a run and he could be heard crashing his way down the ravine and
splashing into the pools as he went. The remainder of the journey back
to camp was made through the open pine forest on the top of the
mountain.
Superintendent McCullough, who has charge of Haggin & Carr's sheep
camps on Pinos Mountain, stopped at the Examiner camp when he made his
inspecting tours, and consultations were held with him about the
bears. From the reports given him by the herders he judged that only
the bears that lived on the mountain were prowling about, and that the
invading army had not arrived from the Alamo and the Sespe region. A
large cinnamon bear had walked into one camp about ten miles distant
and killed two sheep in daylight, but the grizzlies had not begun to
eat mutton. In July or August there would be bears enough to keep a
man busy shinning up trees. Last year, he said, there were at least
forty bears on the mountain, and they visited some of the sheep camps
every night. Sometimes two or three bears would raid a camp, tree the
herder and kill several sheep. The herders were not expected to fight
bears or attempt to drive them away, and the owners reckoned upon the
loss of several hundred sheep every summer.
Shortly before the first of July the camp was moved to Seymore Spring,
about two miles from the mill, where good water and feed were plenty,
and search for bear sign was continued. Every day some deep gorge or
rocky ravine was visited and thoroughly hunted, and a deer was killed
occasionally, but no sign of bears was found until the 3d of July,
when the tracks of a very large grizzly were discovered crossing a
ridge between the Lockwood Valley and the Seymour. The tracks were
followed across the Seymour Valley to a spur of the mountain between
the mill ravine and a deep canyon to the westward.
Camp was moved to a green cienaga at the head of the latter, which was
christened Bear Canyon, and the building of a trap was begun near the
mouth--about half a mile from camp. Three large pine trees served as
corner posts for a pen built of twenty-inch logs, "gained" at the
corners and fastened together with stout oak pins. The pen was about
twelve feet long, four feet high and five feet wide inside, and the
door was made of pine logs sunk into the ground and wedged and pinned
securely. A door of four-inch planks, so heavy that it required three
men to raise it, was set in front, between oak guides pinned
vertically to the trees and suspended by a rope running over a pulley
and back to a trigger that engaged with a pivoted stick of oak, to
which the bait was to be fastened. Five days were consumed in the
construction of the trap, and while the work was going on a bear
visited the camp at night and stampeded all the saddle and pack
animals out of the canyon.
A German prospector named Sparkuhle, who was staying temporarily in
the camp, was cured of a severe case of skepticism that night.
Sparkuhle believed nothing that he could not see, and he declared,
with exasperating iteration, "I believe there don't vas any bears in
der gountry. I look for 'em every day, thinking perhaps might I could
see one, but I don't could see any." And every night before he turned
in, Sparkuhle said: "Vell, might did a bear come tonight. I wish I
could see one, but I think there don't vas any bears at all."
Sparkuhle scorned the shelter of the bough shed, under which the
Examiner outfit slept, and spread his blankets on top of a bank about
six feet above a rocky shelf that was used as a pantry and kitchen.
His only weapon was his pick, and he was not afraid of being disturbed
by any prowling animal.
It was about midnight when the camp was alarmed by the snorting of the
horses and the clatter of hoofs galloping down the canyon, but before
the cause of the disturbance could be learned a yell of surprise came
from Sparkuhle, followed by a crash and a terrible clatter among the
pots and pans below the bank. In another moment Sparkuhle ran into
the camp and began to tell excitedly what had happened to him. He was
so intensely interested in his story that he paid no attention to a
three-tined fork that was sticking in him just below the end of his
back. He said he was awakened by the noise in camp, and looking up
thought he saw the burro standing over him. Seizing his pillow he made
a swipe at the animal, and said, "Get away, Balaam!" and then the
supposed burro hit him a clip and knocked him spinning over the edge
of the bank, but the blow did no further damage because Sparkuhle was
rolled up in half a dozen blankets. The noise of his arrival among the
tinware alarmed the bear and when the party got out with lights and
guns he was out of sight. Sparkuhle slept in the cabin after that.
Two days later the big bear went into a sheep camp near the mill,
while the herder was cooking supper, stampeded the sheep right over
the fire, caught one and killed it, and sat down within thirty yards
of the herder and leisurely gorged himself with mutton. The Mexican
herder described him as "grande" and "muy blanco" and said he was as
tall as a mule. On the following day at noon the same bear went into
another sheep camp about three miles from the mill, and stole a
freshly killed sheep, which the herder had hung up for his own use.
Then he suddenly ceased his raids and disappeared and for the next
three weeks the mountain seemed to be deserted by the bears.
The herders had put strychnine into the carcasses of several sheep
that had died of eating poisonous weeds, and McCullough thought the
bears must have eaten the poisoned mutton and become sick. It requires
a strong dose of strychnine to kill a grizzly, and frequently the
bears get only enough to make them ill and send them into temporary
retirement in some dark gorge.
But while the bears were away the mountain lions and panthers managed
to keep things from becoming dull. They came into camp several times
and made the canyon ring with their yowling, but they always kept
brush between themselves and the fire-light, and it was impossible to
get a shot at them. Their raids became so annoying that two hounds
were procured and brought into camp; after that the nightprowling
beasts kept at a respectful distance. Being unable to steal any more
provisions from the Examiner outfit, the lions turned their attention
to the sheep camps. One night a lion sneaked up through a willow
thicket to the nearest sheep camp and killed three sheep. He was a
dainty lion, evidently, as he only cut the throats of the sheep and
drank their blood and did not eat any mutton. The same lion followed
the scent of a carcass that had been dragged to the bear trap for
bait, but he stopped twenty yards from the trap, and went away, not
caring to risk his neck by going into any such contrivance.
Wherever bait was dragged over the mountain, and it was dragged many
miles for the purpose of enticing bear to the trap, the lions followed
the trail, but they would not go into the trap. Still it is not safe
to generalize from this fact and assume that the cougar or mountain
lion never will go into a trap, for he is a most erratic and uncertain
beast. Sometimes he is an arrant coward, and again he is as bold as a
genuine lion. Generally a dog will keep cougars away from a camp or
house, but once in a while the cougar hunts the dog and kills him.
One afternoon a cougar jumped into Joe Dye's dooryard at his ranch on
the Sespe, picked up Joe's baby and sprang over the fence with it. Joe
seized his rifle and shot the animal as it ran, and when the cougar
felt the sting of the bullet he dropped the baby and ran up the
mountain. He had seized the baby's clothes only, and the little one
was not hurt. The next night the cougar returned, captured Joe's
hound, carried it into the mountains and killed it.
On the 1st of August, the report reached camp that the bears were
having a picnic on the Mutaw ranch and were killing hogs by the score.
John F. Cuddy's sons, the best vaqueros and bronco-riders in this part
of the country, offered to go over to the Mutaw with the correspondent
and lasso a bear if one could be found on open ground; accordingly,
the party saddled up and took the trail up the Piru, arriving at the
Mutaw meadows late in the night, after a rough ride of twenty miles.
In the morning Mr. Taylor, one of the owners of the ranch, was found
skinning a grizzly that had eaten strychnine in pork during the night.
Mr. Taylor had put poison out all over the ranch and the prospect of
catching a live bear seemed dubious, but all the poisoned meat that
could be found was buried at once, and Bowers and the correspondent
began building a trap to catch a bear that had been making twelve-inch
tracks around the cabins. The Cuddy boys rode about looking for bear,
and one of them lassoed an eagle that had waterlogged himself and was
sitting stupidly on a rock by the creek. The bird measured nine feet
across the wings. Messrs. Louis and Taylor, owners of the Mutaw,
received the party hospitably and assisted in the work of preparing
the trap. But Mr. Taylor forgot where he had put some of his poison,
and in forty-eight hours all the dogs in the place, including the
Examiner's two hounds, were stiffened out and turned up their toes.
Chopping off their tails and pouring sweet oil down their throats did
not restore them.
No chance to lasso a bear presented itself, and as soon as the trap
was completed and baited with two live pigs the party returned to Pine
Mountain.
At last it became evident that the bears on Mount Pinos could not be
enticed into a trap while they had their pick and choice of the
thousands of sheep that grazed on the mountain. They preferred to do
their own butchering and would not touch mutton that was killed for
them by anybody else. A cougar raided a camp one night, sprang upon
the sheep from a willow thicket and killed three within twenty yards
of the sleeping herder. The fastidious cougar cut their throats,
sucked their blood and left their carcasses at the edge of the thicket
without eating the meat. But the bears would not touch what the cougar
left.
Shortly after this the herders reported that the bears were avoiding
the sheep and passing around the bands without making an attack.
Apparently bruin had made a miscalculation in his calendar and was
keeping Lent in the wrong season, but his erratic conduct was
explained when some of the herders admitted that they had put
strychnine into several carcasses. Some of the bears had got doses of
poison large enough to make them mortally unwell, but had survived and
sworn off eating mutton. They disappeared from the vicinity of the
camps and grazing ground, and went into solitary confinement in remote
and deep gorges, where nobody but a lunatic would follow them.
The result of many weeks' hard work on Mount Pinos was the acquirement
of some knowledge of the nature and eccentricities of Ursus ferox,
which was glibly imparted by Tom, Dick and Harry, who assumed that the
mere fact of their having lived near the mountains qualified them to
speak as authorities on the habits of bears.
One inspired idiot declared that the best way to catch a grizzly was
to give him atropia, which would make him blind for a day or two, and
lead him along like a tame calf. This genius was so enamored of his
great discovery that he went about the country telling everybody that
the Examiner man was going to catch a grizzly with atropia, and that
he (the aforesaid lunatic) was the inventor of the scheme and general
boss of the outfit.
"A bear will do this," said one. "He will do so and so," said another,
and "you just do that and he'll go right into the trap," said a dozen
more. Everybody seemed to be loaded to the guards with an assorted
cargo of general ignorance about bears, which they were anxious to
discharge upon the Examiner expedition, but not one man in the whole
lot ever caught a grizzly, and very few ever saw one.
As a matter of fact, determined by experience and observation, a
grizzly will do none of the things laid down as rules of conduct for
him by the wise men of the mountains, but will do pretty much as he
pleases, and act as his individual whim or desire moves him. It is a
mistake to generalize about bears from the actions of one of the
species. One bear will be bold and inquisitive, and will walk right
into a camp to gratify his curiosity, while another will carefully
avoid man and all his works.
The predictions of an ursine invasion of Mount Pinos were not
fulfilled and when it became clear that the few grizzlies in the
neighborhood were too timid and wary to be caught, the expedition
struck camp and moved on, leaving the traps set for luck.