IN THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW.
Over-confidence and some contempt for bears, born of easy victories
cheaply won, led one noted Californian hunter into The Valley of the
Shadow, from which he emerged content to let his fame rest wholly upon
his past record and without ardor for further distinction as a slayer
of Grizzlies. As mementoes of a fight that has become a classic in the
ursine annals of California, John W. Searles, the borax miner of San
Bernardino, kept for many years in his office a two-ounce bottle filled
with bits of bone and teeth from his own jaw, and a Spencer rifle
dented in stock and barrel by the teeth of a Grizzly.
On a hunting trip in Kern county, Mr. Searles had a remarkable run of
luck and piled three bears in a heap without moving out of his tracks
or getting the least sign of fight. It was so easy that he insisted
upon going right through the Tehachepi range and killing all the
Grizzlies infesting the mountains. He and his party made camp in
March, 1870, not far from the headquarters of General Beale's Liebra
ranch in the northern part of Los Angeles county. Romulo Pico was then
in charge at the Liebra, and nearly thirty years later, while hunting a
notorious bear on the scene of Searles's adventure, he told me the
story of the fight.
Searles was armed with a Spencer repeater but had shot away the
ammunition adapted to the rifle and had been able to procure only some
cartridges which fitted the chamber so badly that two blows of the
hammer were generally required to explode one of them. Notwithstanding
this serious defect of his weapon, Searles had so poor an opinion of
the Grizzly that he went out alone after the bear several miles from
camp. There was some snow on the ground and on the brush, and finding
bear tracks, Searles tied his horse and took the trail afoot. He found
a bear lying asleep under the brush and killed it, and while he was
standing over the body he heard another bear breaking brush in a
thicket not far away.
Leaving the dead bear, he took up the trail of its mate and followed
until his clothing was soaked with melting snow and the daylight was
almost gone. The bear halted in a dense thicket and Searles began
working his way through the chaparral to stir him up. Of course the
bear was not where his tracks seemed to indicate him to be, and the
meeting was sudden and unexpected. The bear rose within two feet of
the hunter and almost behind him. There was neither time nor room to
put rifle to shoulder, and Searles swung it around, pointed it by guess
and fired. The ball did little damage, but the powder flash partly
blinded the bear and it came down to all-fours and began pawing at its
eyes, giving Searles an opportunity to throw in another cartridge and
take fair aim at the head.
If Searles had not forgotten in his excitement the defect of his
weapon, the bear fight would have been ended right there. He pulled
trigger with deadly aim, but the rifle missed fire. Instead of
re-cocking the piece and trying a second snap, he worked the lever,
threw in a new cartridge and pulled the trigger. Again no explosion.
Again he failed to remember the trick of the rifle, and tried a third
cartridge, which also missed fire.
Then the bear became interested in the affair and turned upon the
hunter at close quarters. Seizing the barrel of the rifle in his jaws,
the Grizzly wrenched it from Searles's grasp, threw it aside and hurled
himself bodily upon his foe. Searles went down beneath the bear.
Placing one paw upon his breast the bear crunched the hunter's lower
jaw between his teeth, tore a mouthful of flesh from his throat and
took a third bite out of his shoulder. Then he rolled the man over,
bit into his back and went away.
The cold Californian night saved the man's life by freezing the blood
that flowed from his wounds and sealing up the torn veins. He was a
robust, hardy man, and he pulled himself together and refused to die
out there in the brush. With his jaw hanging by shreds, his wind-pipe
severed and his left arm dangling useless, he crawled to his horse, got
into the saddle and rode to camp, whence his companions took him to the
Liebra ranch house. Romulo Pico was sure Searles would die before
morning, but he dressed the wounds with the simple skill of the
mountaineer who learns some things not taught in books, and tried to
make death as little painful as possible. Finding Searles not only
alive in the morning but obstinately determined not to submit to the
indignity of being killed by a bear, Pico hitched up a team to a ranch
wagon and sent him to Los Angeles, a two-days' journey, where the
surgeons consulted over him and proposed all sorts of interesting
operations by way of experiment upon a man who was sure to die anyway.
Searles was unable to tell the surgeons what he thought of their
schemes for wiring him together, but he indicated his dissent by
kicking one of them in the stomach. Then they called in a dentist as
an expert on broken jaws, after they had attended to the other damages,
and the dentist showed them how to remove the debris and where to patch
and sew, and they managed to get the shattered piece of human machinery
tinkered up in fairly good shape. The vitality and obstinacy of
Searles did the rest, and in a few weeks he was on his feet again and
planning prospecting trips to Death Valley, not The Valley of the
Shadow through which he had passed, but the grewsome desert of Southern
California where he found his fortune in borax.