carried away tools required in trap building, and embezzled quite a
sum of money. The fellow had attempted to impose upon the
correspondent by whittling out pine-bark models of bear's feet, with
which to make tracks around the trap; and had proposed various
swindling jobs to others of the party, explaining that the "Examiner
was rich and they might as well get a hack at the money." He had
opened and read letters intrusted to him for mailing, and had proved
himself generally a faithless scamp and an unconscionable liar. A
written demand upon him, for restitution of his plunder, elicited
only a coarse and abusive letter, but there was no time to waste in
prosecuting the fellow and he was left in the enjoyment of his booty
and in such satisfaction as the rascal mind of him could derive from
the fact that he had succeeded in robbing his employer.
The big bear on the Mutaw never came near the trap built for his
special accommodation, notwithstanding the confident assurances of the
bear experts on the ranch that he was sure to show up within
forty-eight hours. For two months after the poisoning of his campanero
no signs of the large grizzly were seen anywhere near the Mutaw, and
the hogs roamed about the hills unmolested.
After leaving Mount Pinos the expedition built several traps in the
mountains near trails frequented by bears. An old grizzly that lived
among the unsurveyed and unnamed peaks between Castac Lake and the
Liebra Mountain absorbed the attention of the hunters for some time.
He was an audacious marauder and killed his beef almost within sight
of the camp-fire. Often at night a cow or steer could be heard
bellowing in terror, and in the morning a freshly killed animal would
be found in some hollow not far away, bearing marks of bear's claws.
Whitened bones scattered all over the hills showed that the bear had
been the boss butcher of General Beal's ranch for a long time. His
average allowance of beef appeared to be about two steers a week, but
he usually ate only half a carcass, leaving the rest to the coyotes
and vultures.
One morning Bowers returned from a hunt for the horses, two of which
had been struck and slightly wounded by the bear a few nights before,
and had run away, and reported the discovery of a dead steer within
150 yards of an unfinished trap, about a quarter of a mile from camp.
The animal appeared to have been killed two nights before, and the
bear had made but one meal off the carcass. As he might be expected
to return that night, all haste was made to finish the trap. Bowers
rode out to Gorman's Station to get some nails and honey, while the
correspondent paid a visit to one of General Beal's old corrals and
stole some planks to make a door. He packed the planks up the
mountain, and was using the hammer and saw with great diligence and a
tremendous amount of noise, when bruin sauntered down the ridge,
looked curiously at him and calmly began eating an early supper,
wholly indifferent to the noise of the hammer and the presence of the
man.
It was nearly dark when Bowers rode up to the trap, his horse in a
lather composed of equal parts of perspiration and honey, the latter
having leaked profusely from the cans tied to the saddle. Tossing the
nails to the correspondent, Bowers hastily dismounted and went afoot
up the ridge toward the dead steer, intending to place a can of honey
near it. In about a minute Bowers was seen running from the ridge in
fifteen-foot jumps, and as he approached the trap he shouted: "The
bear is there now!"
"Is that so?" said the correspondent. "I thought he had finished his
supper and had gone away by this time."
Bowers had approached to within forty yards of the bear before seeing
him, and the bear had merely raised his head, taken a look at the
intruder and resumed his eating. As it had become too dark to drive
nails, and there was no longer any reason for finishing the door that
night, Bowers fetched the rifles from camp and the two men went up the
ridge to take a better look at the bear. Had there been light enough
to make the rifle sights visible, it would have been hard to resist
the temptation of turning loose at the old fellow from behind a
convenient log; but it was impossible to draw a bead on him, and it
would have been sheer foolhardiness to shoot and take the chances of a
fight in the dark with a wounded grizzly. Besides, if shot at and
missed, the bear would probably not return, and all the chances of
getting him into the trap would be lost. So the two sat on a log and
watched the grizzly till the night came on thick and dark, when they
returned to camp.
The trap was finished the next day, but a somewhat ludicrous accident
destroyed its possibilities of usefulness, and made it quite certain
that bruin would never be caught in it. Not expecting a visit from the
bear, for at least two days, the correspondent went up to the ridge
just before dark, made a rope fast to the remains of a steer, and
dragged him down to the trap. Bowers had gone back to Ventura on
business, and the correspondent was alone on the mountain; when he
went into the trap to fix a can of honey upon the trigger, he placed a
stick under the door, in such a way that if the door should fall he
could use the stick as a lever to pry it up, and so avoid an
experience like Dad Coffman's.
The precaution was well taken. While he was arranging the bait he
heard snuffling and the movement of some animal outside. Supposing
that some cow or perhaps the burro was wandering about, he paid no
particular attention to the noise, but when the bait was arranged and
he turned to go out he saw the muzzle of old bruin poked into the door
and his eyes blinking curiously at the dark interior of the trap.
Bruin had come down for a feast and had followed the trail of the
steer's remains with unexpected promptness. He had scented the honey,
which was more alluring than stale beef, and evidently was considering
the propriety of entering the trap to get his supper, which might
consist of honeycomb _au naturel_, with Examiner man on the side.
The man in the trap deemed it highly improper for the bear to intrude
at that time, and quickly decided the etiquette of the case by
kicking the trigger and letting the door fall with a dull thud plump
upon the old grizzly's nose. A hundred and sixty pounds falling four
feet is no laughing affair when it hits one on the nose, and bruin did
not make light of it. He was pained and surprised, and he went away
more in sorrow than in anger, judging from the tone of his
expostulating grunts and snorts.
When the snorts of the bear died away in the distance, the
correspondent pried up the door, crawled out and cautiously made his
way through the dark woods to his lonely camp.
At this time there were six traps scattered through the mountains
within a radius of sixty miles, all of them set and baited, and the
more distant ones watched by men employed for that purpose. One of the
traps was on a mountain that was not pastured by cattle, or sheep, and
as there were no acorns in that part of the country, the bears had to
rustle for a living and were unable to withstand the temptation
offered by quarters of beef judiciously exposed to their raids.
The bait scattered around this trap was discovered by four bears, but
for some time they regarded it with suspicion, and were afraid to
touch it, possibly because they detected the scent of man near it.
Gradually they became accustomed to it and the signs of man's
presence, and then they began to quarrel over the meat, as was plainly
indicated by the disturbance of the ground where their tracks met. Two
of the tracks were of medium size, one was quite large and evidently
made by a grizzly, and the fourth was enormous, being fourteen inches
long and nine inches wide.
The last-named track was not made by a grizzly however. There were six
toes on the forefoot, and this peculiar deformity was the
distinguishing mark of a gigantic cinnamon bear known to hunters as
"Six-Toed Pete."
It was almost invariably found, during the long campaign in the
wilderness, that tracks over eleven inches in length were made by
cinnamon bears, and not by genuine grizzlies, although some hunters
declare that the cinnamon is only a variety of grizzly, and that the
color is not the mark of a different species. However that may be, the
difference between the two varieties is very distinct, and as the
object of the expedition was the capture of an indubitable California
grizzly, no special effort was made to trap any of the big cinnamons.
The smaller bears soon gave up the contest for the beef and left the
field to Pete and the grizzly, who quarreled and fought around it for
several nights. At last the grizzly gave Pete a thorough licking and
established his own right to the title of monarch of the mountain. The
decisive battle occurred one moonlight night and was witnessed from a
safe perch in a fork of a tree near the trap.
It was nearly 9 o'clock when the snapping of dry sticks indicated the
approach of a heavy animal through the brush, and in a few moments the
big grizzly came into sight, walking slowly and sniffing suspiciously.
A smart breeze was drawing down the canyon, and the bear, being to the
windward, could not smell the man up the tree, but he approached the
meat cautiously and seemed in no hurry for his supper. While he was
reconnoitering another animal was heard smashing through the thicket,
and presently the huge bulk of Six-Toed Pete loomed up in the
moonlight at the edge of the opening.
At the approach of the cinnamon the grizzly rose upon his haunches and
uttered low, hoarse growls, and when the big fellow appeared within
twenty feet of him, he launched himself forward with surprising
swiftness and struck Pete a blow on the neck that staggered him. It
was like one of Sullivan's rushes in the ring, and the blow of that
ponderous paw would have knocked out an ox; but Pete was no slouch of
a slugger himself, and he quickly recovered and returned the blow with
such good will that had the grizzly's head been in the way it would
have ached for a week afterward.
Then the fur began to fly.
It was impossible to follow the movements of the combatants in detail,
as they sparred, clinched and rolled about, but in a general way
Six-Toed Pete seemed to be trying to make his superior weight tell by
rushing at the grizzly and knocking him over, while the latter avoided
the direct impact of the cinnamon's great bulk by quick turns and a
display of agility that was scarcely credible in so unwieldy looking
an animal. Once the cinnamon seized the grizzly by the throat and for
a moment hushed the latter's fierce growls by choking off his wind,
but the grizzly sat down, threw his arm over Pete's neck, placed his
other forepaw upon Pete's nose, sunk his claws in deep, and instantly
broke the hold. As they parted, the grizzly made a vicious sweep with
his right paw and caught Pete on the side of the head. The blow either
destroyed the cinnamon's left eye or tore the flesh around it, so that
the blood blinded him on that side, for during the rest of the fight
he tried to keep his right side toward the grizzly and seemed unable
to avoid blows delivered on his left.
For at least a quarter of an hour the combat raged, without an
instant's cessation, both belligerents keeping up a terrific growling,
punctuated with occasional howls of pain. Neither could get a fair
blow at the other's head. Had the grizzly struck the cinnamon with the
full force of his tremendous arm, Pete's skull would have surely been
smashed. Pete finally got enough, broke away from the Monarch and fled
into the brush, a badly used up bear; and he never came back.
Having won his supper by force of arms, the grizzly was no longer
suspicious of the bait, and he ate up the best part of a quarter of
beef before he left the battle ground. He soon became accustomed to
the trap, and regularly came there for his meals, which were gradually
placed nearer the door and finally inside the structure. A piece of
meat was tied to the trigger, and one morning the door was found
closed, and a great ripping and tearing was heard going on inside. The
Monarch was caught at last.
Upon the approach of the men, the grizzly became furious and made the
heavy logs tremble and shake in his efforts to get out and resent the
indignity that had been placed upon him. Had he concentrated his
attack on any one spot and been left to wreak his rage without
interruption he would have been out in a few hours, but he was not
permitted to work long at any place. Wherever he began work he
encountered the end of a heavy stake which was jabbed against his nose
and head with all the power of a man's arms.
Day and night from the moment he was found in the trap, the Monarch
was watched and guarded, and he kept two men busy all the time.
Although his attention was distracted from the trap as much as
possible, he found time to gnaw and rip a ten-inch log almost in two,
and sometimes he made the bark and splinters fly in a way that was
calculated to make a nervous man loathe the job of standing guard over
him. For six days the Monarch was so busy trying to break jail that he
had no time to fool away in eating. Solitary confinement developed in
him a most malicious temper and he flew into a rage whenever food was
thrown to him.
But his applications for a writ of habeas corpus were persistently
denied by a man with a club, and the Monarch at last cooled down a
little and condescended to take a light lunch of raw venison. He was
given two days for reflection and meditation, and when he seemed to be
in a more reasonable mood, the work of preparing him for a visit to
the city was begun.
A running noose was made in a stout chain and put into the trap
between two of the logs, and when the bear stepped his forepaw into
the noose it was drawn taut and held by four men outside. Despite the
strain upon the chain the bear easily threw the noose off with his
other paw, letting the men fall backwards in a heap on the ground.
Again and again the trick was tried but the noose would not hold.
Then the method of working the chain was changed and the noose let
down through the top of the trap, and after many failures it was drawn
sharply up round his arm near the shoulder, where it held. Ten hours
were consumed in the effort to secure one leg and the Monarch fought
furiously every minute of the time, biting the chain, seizing it with
his paws and charging about in his prison as though he were crazy. He
was utterly reckless of consequences to himself, and he bit the iron
so savagely that he splintered his teeth and wholly destroyed his
longer tushes.
Having secured one leg, it was comparatively easy to get another
chain around his other paw and two ropes around his hind legs, and
then he was stretched out, spread-eagle fashion, on the floor of the
trap.
[Illustration: Large Black Bear.--Page 250.]
The next move was to fasten a heavy chain around his neck in such a
way that it could not choke him, and to accomplish this it was
necessary to muzzle the Monarch. A stick about eighteen inches long
and two inches thick was held under his nose, and he promptly seized
it in his jaws. Before he dropped it a stout cord was made fast to one
end of the stick, passed over his nose, around the other end of the
stick, under his jaw, and then wound around his muzzle and the stick
in such a way as to bind his jaws together, a turn back of his head
holding the gag firmly in place.
The Monarch was now bound, gagged and utterly helpless, but he never
ceased roaring with rage at his captors and struggling to get just one
blow at them with his paw. It was an easy matter for a man to get
upon his back, put a chain collar around his neck, and fasten the
heavy chain with a swivel to the collar. The collar was kept in place
by a chain rigged like a martingale and passed under his arms and over
his back. A stout rope made fast about his body completed the
Monarch's fetters and the gag was then removed from the royal mouth.
The King of the mountains was a hopeless prisoner--Gulliver, tied hand
and foot by the Lilliputians.
The next morning Monarch was lashed upon a rough sled--a contrivance
known to lumbermen as a "go-devil"--to make the journey down the
mountain. The first team of horses procured to haul him could not be
driven anywhere near the bear. They plunged and snorted and became
utterly unmanageable, and finally they broke away and ran home. The
next team was but little better, and small progress was made the first
day.
At night the Monarch was released from the "go-devil" and secured
only by his chains to a large tree. The ropes were removed from his
legs, and he was allowed considerable freedom to move about, but a
close watch was kept upon him. After several futile efforts to break
away, he accepted the situation, stretched himself at the foot of the
tree and watched the camp-fire all night.
In the morning the ropes were replaced, after a lively combat, and the
bear was again lashed to the sled. Four horses were harnessed to it
and the journey was resumed. Men with axes and bars went ahead to make
a road, and it was with no small amount of labor that they made it
passable. The poor old bear was slammed along over the rocks and
through the brush, but he never whimpered at the hardest jolts. With
all the care that could be observed, it was impossible to make his
ride anything but a series of bumps, slides and capsizes, and the
progress was slow. At the steep places men held the sled back with
ropes and tried to keep it right side up.
Four days on a "go-devil" is no pleasure excursion, even for a tough
grizzly, and when the Monarch was released from his uncomfortable
vehicle, at the foot of the mountain, he seemed glad to get a chance
to stretch himself and rest. For nearly a week he was left free of all
fetters except the chain on his neck and the rope around his body, and
he spent his days in slumber and his nights eating and digging a great
hole in the ground. Having convinced himself that he could neither
break his chain nor bite it in two, he accepted the situation with
surly resignation and asked only to be let alone and fed decently.
While the bear was recuperating and becoming reconciled to what
couldn't be helped, a cage was being built of Oregon pine lumber with
an iron-barred door, and when it was finished he was dragged into it
by the heels. As soon as he saw the ropes, Monarch knew that mischief
was afoot, and when a man began throwing back into the hole the dirt
that he had dug out, he mounted the heap and silently but strenuously
began to dig for himself a new hole. He worked twice as fast as two
men with shovels, and in his efforts to escape he only assisted in
filling up the old hole.
For some time he baffled all attempts to get ropes on his forepaws,
having learned the trick of throwing them off and seizing the loops
with his teeth, but he was soon secured and stretched out on his back.
The Monarch roared his remonstrances and did his best to get even for
the outrages that had been done to his rights and his feelings, but
the ropes were tough and he could not get a chance to use his enormous
strength. He was dragged on his back into the cage, the door was
dropped and the ropes were removed, but the chain remained around his
neck and that was made fast to the bars. As soon as he found himself
shut up in a box the angry and insulted bear ceased roaring and in a
short time he philosophically stretched himself on the floor and
wondered what would happen next.
The next thing that happened to him was the standing of his cage on
end, but that did not appear to disturb him. A wagon was backed up,
and the cage was tilted down again and placed upon the wagon, which
was then hauled down the canyon and along the river bed to a little
water station on the Southern Pacific Railroad, where the cage was put
upon a stock car. The car was provisioned with a quarter of beef, and
a lot of watermelons, and attached to a freight train, then men who
had helped to bring the bear out of the mountains waved their hats,
and the Monarch caught a last glimpse of his native hills as the train
whirled him and the correspondent northward.
It must have been a very strange, perhaps terrifying, thing to the
wild grizzly to be jolted along for two days on a rattling, bumping,
lurching freight train, with the shrieking of steam whistles and the
ringing of bells, but he endured it all heroically and gave no sign of
fear. He ate well when food was given him, taking meat from his
captor's hands through the bars, and slept soundly when he was tired.
He seemed to know and yield a sort of obedience to the correspondent,
but resented with menacing growls the impertinent curiosity of
strangers who came to look at him through the bars.
In every crowd that, came to see him there was at least one fool
afflicted with a desire to poke the bear with a stick, and constant
vigilance was necessary to prevent such witless persons from enraging
him. At Mojave, when the correspondent went to the car, he found a
dozen idlers inside, and one inspired lunatic was stirring up the
Monarch, who was rapidly losing his temper. The cage would not have
held him five minutes had he once tackled the bars in a rage, and it
was only the moral influence of the chain around his neck that kept
him quiet. When the correspondent sprang into the car, the grizzly's
eyes were green with anger, and in a moment more there would have been
the liveliest kind of a circus on that freight train. Hustling the
crowd out with unceremonious haste--incidentally throwing a few
maledictions at the man with the stick--the correspondent drove the
Monarch back from the bars, and ordered him to lie down, and for the
next half hour rode in the car with him and talked him into a
peaceable frame of mind.
From the freight depot on Townsend Street the cage was hauled on a
truck to Woodward's Gardens, and under the directions of Louis
Ohnimus, superintendent of the gardens, the Monarch was transferred to
more comfortable quarters. His cage was backed up to one of the
permanent cages, both doors were opened, and he was invited to move,
but he refused to budge until his chain was passed around the bars
and hauled by four stout men. The grizzly resisted for a few minutes,
but suddenly decided to change his quarters and went with a rush and a
roar, wheeling about and striking savagely through the bars at the
men. But Mr. Ohnimus had expected just such a performance and taken
such precautions that nobody was hurt and no damage done.
The Monarch had shown himself a brave fighter and an animal of unusual
courage in every way. He had endured the roughest kind of a journey
without weakening, and compelled respect and admiration from the
moment of his capture. But when the strain and excitement were over,
and he was left to himself, the effects became apparent, and for two
or three days he was a sick bear. He had a fever and would not eat for
a time, but Mr. Ohnimus took charge of him, doctored him with
medicines good for the ills of bear flesh, and soon tempted back his
appetite with rabbits and pigeons.
Soon the Monarch was sufficiently convalescent to rip the sheet iron
from the side of his cage and break a hole through into the hyena's
quarters. By night he was on his muscle in great shape, and
Superintendent Ohnimus sent for the correspondent to sit up with him
all night and help keep the half-ton grizzly from tearing things to
pieces. By watching the old fellow and talking to him now and then
they managed to distract his attention from mischief most of the time,
but he got in considerable work and rolled up several sheets of iron
as though they were paper.
It was evident that no ordinary cage would hold him, and men were at
once employed to line one of the compartments with heavy iron of the
toughest quality and to strengthen it with bars and angle iron. This
made a perfectly secure place of confinement. A watch was kept on the
Monarch by the garden keepers during the day, and by the
superintendent and the correspondent every night, until the work was
finished and the Monarch transferred.
The grizzly is now safely housed in the first apartment of the line of
cages, and under the watchful care of Mr. Ohnimus will soon recover
his lost flesh and energy and again be the magnificent animal that he
was when he was the undisputed monarch of the Sierra Madre.
LATEST BULLETIN.
Monarch a True Grizzly.