appear. The Boomtown _Spike_ told in each issue how the men of the
chain and compass were pushing westward; but still they did not come,
and the settlers’ hopes of getting their claims filed before winter
grew fainter. The mass of them had planned to take claims in the
spring, live on them the required six months, “prove up,” and return
East for the winter.
In spite of these disappointments, all continued to be merry. No one
took any part of it very seriously. The young men went out and ploughed
when they pleased, and came in and sat on the door-step and talked with
the women when they were weary. The shanties were hot and crowded, but
no one minded that; by-and-by they were to build bigger.
And, then, all was so new and beautiful, and the sky was so clear. Oh,
that marvellous, lofty sky with just clouds enough to make the blue
more intense! Oh, the wonder of the wind from the wild, mysterious
green sea to the west! With the change and sheen of the prairie,
incessant and magical life was made marvellous and the winter put far
away.
Merry parties drove here and there visiting. Formalities counted
for little, and yet with all this freedom of intercourse, this close
companionship, no one pointed the finger of gossip toward any woman.
The girls in their one-room huts received calls from their bachelor
neighbors with the confidence that comes from purity of purpose, both
felt and understood. Life was strangely idyllic during these spring
days. Envy and hate and suspicion seemed exorcised from the world.
OLD EPHRAIM
THE GRIZZLY
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
From “Hunting-Trips of a Ranchman.” Reprinted by permission of the
publishers, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York.[30]
But few bears are found in the immediate neighborhood of my ranch; and
though I have once or twice seen their tracks in the Bad Lands, I have
never had any experience with the animals themselves except during the
elk-hunting trip on the Bighorn Mountains, described in the preceding
chapter.
The grizzly bear undoubtedly comes in the category of dangerous game,
and is, perhaps, the only animal in the United States that can be
fairly so placed, unless we count the few jaguars found north of the
Rio Grande. But the danger of hunting the grizzly has been greatly
exaggerated, and the sport is certainly very much safer than it was at
the beginning of this century. The first hunters who came into contact
with this great bear were men belonging to that hardy and adventurous
class of backwoodsmen which had filled the wild country between the
Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi. These men carried but one
weapon: the long-barrelled, small-bored pea-rifle, whose bullets ran
seventy to the pound, the amount of powder and lead being a little
less than that contained in the cartridge of a thirty-two calibre
Winchester. In the Eastern States almost all the hunting was done in
the woodland; the shots were mostly obtained at short distance, and
deer and black bear were the largest game; moreover, the pea-rifles
were marvellously accurate for close range, and their owners were famed
the world over for their skill as marksmen. Thus these rifles had so
far proved plenty good enough for the work they had to do, and indeed
had done excellent service as military weapons in the ferocious wars
that the men of the border carried on with their Indian neighbors, and
even in conflict with more civilized foes, as at the battles of King’s
Mountain and New Orleans. But when the restless frontiersmen pressed
out over the Western plains, they encountered in the grizzly a beast
of far greater bulk and more savage temper than any of those found in
the Eastern woods, and their small-bore rifles were utterly inadequate
weapons with which to cope with him. It is small wonder that he was
considered by them to be almost invulnerable, and extraordinarily
tenacious of life. He would be a most unpleasant antagonist now to a
man armed only with a thirty-two calibre rifle, that carried but a
single shot and was loaded at the muzzle. A rifle, to be of use in this
sport, should carry a ball weighing from half an ounce to an ounce.
With the old pea-rifles the shot had to be in the eye or heart; and
accidents to the hunter were very common. But the introduction of heavy
breech-loading repeaters has greatly lessened the danger, even in the
very few and far-off places where the grizzlies are as ferocious as
formerly. For nowadays these great bears are undoubtedly much better
aware of the death-dealing power of men, and, as a consequence,
much less fierce, than was the case with their forefathers, who so
unhesitatingly attacked the early Western travellers and explorers.
Constant contact with rifle-carrying hunters, for a period extending
over many generations of bear-life, has taught the grizzly by bitter
experience that man is his undoubted overlord, as far as fighting goes;
and this knowledge has become an hereditary characteristic. No grizzly
will assail a man now unprovoked, and one will almost always rather run
than fight; though if he is wounded or thinks himself cornered he will
attack his foes with a headlong, reckless fury that renders him one of
the most dangerous of wild beasts. The ferocity of all wild animals
depends largely upon the amount of resistance they are accustomed to
meet with, and the quantity of molestation to which they are subjected.
The change in the grizzly’s character during the last half-century
has been precisely paralleled by the change in the characters of his
northern cousin, the polar bear, and of the South African lion. When
the Dutch and Scandinavian sailors first penetrated the Arctic seas,
they were kept in constant dread of the white bear, who regarded a man
as simply an erect variety of seal, quite as good eating as the common
kind. The records of these early explorers are filled with examples of
the ferocious and man-eating propensities of the polar bears; but in
the accounts of most of the later Arctic expeditions they are portrayed
as having learned wisdom, and being now most anxious to keep out of the
way of the hunters. A number of my sporting friends have killed white
bears, and none of them were ever even charged. And in South Africa the
English sportsmen and Dutch Boers have taught the lion to be a very
different creature from what it was when the first white man reached
that continent. If the Indian tiger had been a native of the United
States, it would now be one of the most shy of beasts. Of late years
our estimate of the grizzly’s ferocity has been lowered; and we no
longer accept the tales of uneducated hunters as being proper authority
by which to judge it. But we should make a parallel reduction in the
cases of many foreign animals and their describers. Take, for example,
that purely melodramatic beast, the North African lion, as portrayed
by Jules Gérard, who bombastically describes himself as “le tueur des
lions.” Gérard’s accounts are self-evidently in large part fictitious,
while if true they would prove less for the bravery of the lion than
for the phenomenal cowardice, incapacity, and bad marksmanship of the
Algerian Arabs. Doubtless Gérard was a great hunter; but so is many a
Western plainsman, whose account of the grizzlies he has killed would
be wholly untrustworthy. Take for instance the following from page 223
of “La Chasse au Lion”: “The inhabitants had assembled one day to the
number of two or three hundred with the object of killing (the lion)
or driving it out of the country. The attack took place at sunrise; at
midday five hundred cartridges had been expended; the Arabs carried
off one of their number dead and six wounded, and the lion remained
master of the field of battle.” Now if three hundred men could fire
five hundred shots at a lion without hurting him, it merely shows
that they were wholly incapable of hurting anything, or else that M.
Gérard was more expert with the long-bow than with the rifle. Gérard’s
whole book is filled with equally preposterous nonsense; yet a great
many people seriously accept this same book as trustworthy authority
for the manners and ferocity of the North African lion. It would be
quite as sensible to accept M. Jules Verne’s stories as being valuable
contributions to science. A good deal of the lion’s reputation is built
upon just such stuff.
How the prowess of the grizzly compares with that of the lion or
tiger would be hard to say; I have never shot either of the latter
myself, and my brother, who has killed tigers in India, has never
had a chance at a grizzly. Any one of the big bears we killed on the
mountains would, I should think, have been able to make short work of
either a lion or a tiger; for the grizzly is greatly superior in bulk
and muscular power to either of the great cats, and its teeth are as
large as theirs, while its claws, though blunter, are much longer;
nevertheless, I believe that a lion or a tiger would be fully as
dangerous to a hunter or other human being, on account of the superior
speed of its charge, the lightning-like rapidity of its movements,
and its apparently sharper senses. Still, after all is said, the man
should have a thoroughly trustworthy weapon and a fairly cool head,
who would follow into his own haunts and slay grim Old Ephraim.
A grizzly will only fight if wounded or cornered, or, at least, if he
thinks himself cornered. If a man by accident stumbles on to one close
up, he is almost certain to be attacked really more from fear than from
any other motive; exactly the same reason that makes a rattlesnake
strike at a passer-by. I have personally known of but one instance of
a grizzly turning on a hunter before being wounded. This happened to
a friend of mine, a Californian ranchman, who, with two or three of
his men, was following a bear that had carried off one of his sheep.
They got the bear into a cleft in the mountain from which there was no
escape, and he suddenly charged back through the line of his pursuers,
struck down one of the horsemen, seized the arm of the man in his jaws
and broke it as if it had been a pipe-stem, and was only killed after a
most lively fight, in which, by repeated charges, he at one time drove
every one of his assailants off the field.
But two instances have come to my personal knowledge where a man has
been killed by a grizzly. One was that of a hunter at the foot of the
Bighorn Mountains who had chased a large bear and finally wounded him.
The animal turned at once and came straight at the man, whose second
shot missed. The bear then closed and passed on, after striking only a
single blow; yet that one blow, given with all the power of its thick,
immensely muscular forearm, armed with nails as strong as so many
hooked steel spikes, tore out the man’s collar-bone and snapped through
three or four ribs. He never recovered from the shock, and died that
night.
The other instance occurred to a neighbor of mine--who has a small
ranch on the Little Missouri--two or three years ago. He was out on a
mining trip, and was prospecting with two other men near the head-water
of the Little Missouri, in the Black Hills country. They were walking
down along the river, and came to a point of land, thrust out into it,
which was densely covered with brush and fallen timber. Two of the
party walked round by the edge of the stream; but the third, a German,
and a very powerful fellow, followed a well-beaten game trail, leading
through the bushy point. When they were some forty yards apart the two
men heard an agonized shout from the German, and at the same time the
loud coughing growl, or roar, of a bear. They turned just in time to
see their companion struck a terrible blow on the head by a grizzly,
which must have been roused from its lair by his almost stepping on
it; so close was it that he had no time to fire his rifle, but merely
held it up over his head as a guard. Of course it was struck down, the
claws of the great brute at the same time shattering his skull like an
egg-shell. Yet the man staggered on some ten feet before he fell; but
when he did he never spoke or moved again. The two others killed the
bear after a short, brisk struggle, as he was in the midst of a most
determined charge.
In 1872, near Fort Wingate, New Mexico, two soldiers of a cavalry
regiment came to their death at the claws of a grizzly bear. The army
surgeon who attended them told me the particulars, as far as they were
known. The men were mail carriers, and one day did not come in at the
appointed time. Next day, a relief party was sent out to look for them,
and after some search found the bodies of both, as well as that of one
of the horses. One of the men still showed signs of life; he came to
his senses before dying, and told the story. They had seen a grizzly
and pursued it on horseback, with their Spencer rifles. On coming
close, one had fired into its side, when it turned with marvellous
quickness for so large and unwieldy an animal, and struck down the
horse, at the same time inflicting a ghastly wound on the rider. The
other man dismounted and came up to the rescue of his companion. The
bear then left the latter and attacked the other. Although hit by the
bullet, it charged home and threw the man down, and then lay on him
and deliberately bit him to death, while his groans and cries were
frightful to hear. Afterward it walked off into the bushes without
again offering to molest the already mortally wounded victim of its
first assault.
At certain times the grizzly works a good deal of havoc among the herds
of the stockmen. A friend of mine, a ranchman in Montana, told me that
one fall bears became very plenty around his ranches, and caused him
severe loss, killing with ease even full-grown beef-steers. But one of
them once found his intended quarry too much for him. My friend had a
stocky, rather vicious range stallion, which had been grazing one day
near a small thicket of bushes, and, towards evening, came galloping
in with three or four gashes in his haunch, that looked as if they had
been cut with a dull axe. The cowboys knew at once that he had been
assailed by a bear, and rode off to the thicket near which he had been
feeding. Sure enough a bear, evidently in a very bad temper, sallied
out as soon as the thicket was surrounded, and, after a spirited
fight and a succession of charges, was killed. On examination, it was
found that his under jaw was broken, and part of his face smashed in,
evidently by the stallion’s hoofs. The horse had been feeding when the
bear leaped out at him but failed to kill at the first stroke; then the
horse lashed out behind, and not only freed himself, but also severely
damaged his opponent.
Doubtless, the grizzly could be hunted to advantage with dogs, which
would not, of course, be expected to seize him, but simply to find
and bay him, and distract his attention by barking and nipping.
Occasionally a bear can be caught in the open and killed with the aid
of horses. But nine times out of ten the only way to get one is to put
on moccasins and still-hunt it in its own haunts, shooting it at close
quarters. Either its tracks should be followed until the bed wherein it
lies during the day is found, or a given locality in which it is known
to exist should be carefully beaten through, or else a bait should be
left out and a watch kept on it to catch the bear when he has come to
visit it.
* * * * *
For some days after our arrival on the Bighorn range we did not come
across any grizzly.
Although it was still early in September, the weather was cool and
pleasant, the nights being frosty; and every two or three days there
was a flurry of light snow, which rendered the labor of tracking much
more easy. Indeed, throughout our stay on the mountains, the peaks were
snow-capped almost all the time. Our fare was excellent, consisting of
elk venison, mountain grouse, and small trout; the last caught in one
of the beautiful little lakes that lay almost up by timber line. To
us, who had for weeks been accustomed to make small fires from dried
brush, or from sage-brush roots, which we dug out of the ground, it was
a treat to sit at night before the roaring and crackling pine logs; as
the old teamster quaintly put it, we had at last come to a land “where
the wood grew on trees.” There were plenty of black-tail deer in the
woods, and we came across a number of bands of cow and calf elk, or of
young bulls; but after several days’ hunting, we were still without any
head worth taking home, and had seen no sign of grizzly, which was the
game we were especially anxious to kill; for neither Merrifield nor I
had ever seen a wild bear alive.
Sometimes we hunted in company; sometimes each of us went out alone;
the teamster, of course, remaining in to guard camp and cook. One day
we had separated; I reached camp early in the afternoon, and waited a
couple of hours before Merrifield put in an appearance.
At last I heard a shout--the familiar long-drawn _Ei-koh-h-h_ of the
cattle-men,--and he came in sight galloping at speed down an open
glade, and waving his hat, evidently having had good luck; and when he
reined in his small, wiry, cow-pony, we saw that he had packed behind
his saddle the fine, glossy pelt of a black bear. Better still, he
announced that he had been off about ten miles to a perfect tangle of
ravines and valleys where bear sign was very thick; and not of black
bear either but of grizzly. The black bear (the only one we got on the
mountains) he had run across by accident, while riding up a valley in
which there was a patch of dead timber grown up with berry bushes. He
noticed a black object which he first took to be a stump; for during
the past few days we had each of us made one or two clever stalks up
to charred logs which our imagination converted into bears. On coming
near, however, the object suddenly took to its heels; he followed over
frightful ground at the pony’s best pace, until it stumbled and fell
down. By this time he was close on the bear, which had just reached
the edge of the wood. Picking himself up, he rushed after it, hearing
it growling ahead of him; after running some fifty yards the sounds
stopped, and he stood still listening. He saw and heard nothing, until
he happened to cast his eyes upwards, and there was the bear, almost
overhead, and about twenty-five feet up a tree; and in as many seconds
afterwards it came down to the ground with a bounce, stone dead. It was
a young bear, in its second year, and had probably never before seen a
man, which accounted for the ease with which it was treed and taken.
One minor result of the encounter was to convince Merrifield--the list
of whose faults did not include lack of self-confidence--that he could
run down any bear; in consequence of which idea we on more than one
subsequent occasion went through a good deal of violent exertion.
Merrifield’s tale made me decide to shift camp at once, and go over to
the spot where the bear-tracks were so plenty. Next morning we were
off, and by noon pitched camp by a clear brook, in a valley with steep,
wooded sides, but with good feed for the horses in the open bottom. We
rigged the canvas wagon sheet into a small tent, sheltered by the trees
from the wind, and piled great pine logs near by where we wished to
place the fire; for a night camp in the sharp fall weather is cold and
dreary unless there is a roaring blaze of flame in front of the tent.
That afternoon we again went out, and I shot a fine bull elk. I came
home alone toward nightfall, walking through a reach of burnt forest,
where there was nothing but charred tree trunks and black mould. When
nearly through it I came across the huge, half-human footprints of a
great grizzly, which must have passed by within a few minutes. It gave
me rather an eerie feeling in the silent, lonely woods, to see for the
first time the unmistakable proofs that I was in the home of the mighty
lord of the wilderness. I followed the tracks in the fading twilight
until it became too dark to see them any longer, and then shouldered my
rifle and walked back to camp.
That evening we almost had a visit from one of the animals we were
after. Several times we had heard at night the musical calling of the
bull elk--a sound to which no writer has as yet done justice. This
particular night, when we were in bed and the fire was smouldering,
we were roused by a ruder noise--a kind of grunting or roaring whine,
answered by the frightened snorts of the ponies. It was a bear which
had evidently not seen the fire, as it came from behind the bank, and
had probably been attracted by the smell of the horses. After it made
out what we were it stayed round a short while, again uttered its
peculiar roaring grunt, and went off; we had seized our rifles and had
run out into the woods, but in the darkness could see nothing; indeed
it was rather lucky we did not stumble across the bear, as he could
have made short work of us when we were at such a disadvantage.
Next day we went off on a long tramp through the woods and along the
sides of the canyons. There were plenty of berry bushes growing in
clusters; and all around these there were fresh tracks of bear. But
the grizzly is also a flesh-eater, and has a great liking for carrion.
On visiting the place where Merrifield had killed the black bear, we
found that the grizzlies had been there before us, and had utterly
devoured the carcass, with cannibal relish. Hardly a scrap was left,
and we turned our steps toward where lay the bull elk I had killed.
It was quite late in the afternoon when we reached the place. A
grizzly had evidently been at the carcass during the preceding night,
for his great footprints were in the ground all around it, and the
carcass itself was gnawed and torn, and partially covered with earth
and leaves--for the grizzly has a curious habit of burying all of his
prey that he does not at the moment need. A great many ravens had been
feeding on the body, and they wheeled about over the tree tops above
us, uttering their barking croaks.