Bears I Have Met—and Others

by Allen Kelly

"And then he ate you up, I suppose?"

"No; I'm coming to that. The bear came tumbling down into the barranca on top of the dirt and he began to dig right away. He was as good as a steam paddy, and in a few moments I was able to get a breath of air. I was wondering-which would be the worse, smothering or being chewed up by a bear, when he raked the dirt off my head and I saw daylight. I shut my eyes, thinking I would play dead as a last ruse, when I heard a roar and a rush. There was a trembling of the ground, a dull, heavy shock, and I felt something warm on my face. At the same moment I heard a growl of rage and surprise from the bear and felt relieved of his weight above me. A terrific racket followed. As soon as I could free myself from the dirt, I crawled out cautiously and saw a strange thing. A big black bull, the boss of the Mutaw ranch, had charged on the Grizzly and knocked him over just in time to save me. One of his horns had gored the bear's neck, and it was the warm blood that I felt on my face. They were old enemies, each bore scars of wounds inflicted by the other, and they were having a battle royal down there in the barranca."

"Which licked?" inquired Dad, eagerly.

"I don't know. I'd had enough bear fight for one day, and I lit out for camp and left them clawing and charging and tearing up the ground. I didn't see any necessity for remaining as referee of that scrimmage. You remember, father, that I came into camp covered with blood, and that you thought I had been monkeying with a mountain lion."

"Ye-es, I recollect the circumstances, but I never heard about the bear and bull episode before. I seem to have sort of a dim notion that you were packing a deer home on your back and fell into a barranca with it and lost it in a mud slough, but perhaps I'm mistaken. You forgot to tell me the facts, I guess."

"Shouldn't wonder," said Dad; "Joe does sometimes forget to tell the facts, but he wouldn't lie about a bear."

"I haven't forgotten the facts about your bear trap in Sonoma," retorted Joe.

"I allow that little accident never lost anything by your telling. 'Taint worth telling nohow. You'd better turn in and go to sleep and not be telling durn lies about folks that's old enough to be your great-grandfather, but ain't too old yet to give ye a licking, b'gosh! Don't ye go to fergittin' that I'm a constable, and can arrest people who use language cal'lated to provoke a breach of the peace."

"Dad was a devil of a bear catcher," continued Joe, "and once he built a big trap up in Sonoma. The door weighed about three hundred pounds, and it took two men and a crowbar to lift it. Dad had fixed it so that no bear in Sonoma could raise it from the inside. It was a bully trap, and when it was all finished Dad set the trigger and went inside to tie the bait on. He forgot to prop the door, and as soon as he monkeyed with the trigger he set it off and down came the door with a bang. It worked beautifully.

"When Dad realized that he had caught himself he was sorry he had made such a solid door. He couldn't think of any way of getting out, and there wasn't nobody within five miles. Dad yelled for about an hour and then quit. After a while he heard something coming, and thinking it might be a neighbor riding along the trail, he shouted again. Peering out between' the logs he saw two bears in the moonlight making straight for the trap, and he stopped his noise. The bears came up, sniffed all around, smelt Dad and the bait and began clawing at the logs to get inside. Then Dad was sorry he hadn't built the trap stronger and used heavier logs. He tried to scare the bears by yelling, but the more he yelled, the harder they dug to get at him, and it wasn't long before he heard a mountain lion answering his shout and coming nearer every minute. The lion came down off the mountain, jumped on top of the trap and began tearing at the log's up there. He got his paw down through the trigger-hole, and Dad had to go to the other end of the trap to keep out of reach. Then the bears got the logs torn so that they could reach in between them in two or three places, and they kept Dad on the jump inside. Before morning there was another lion and three more bears at work on the Dad-trap, and they'd have got him by noon that next day if a party of hunters hadn't come along and scared them away. These are the facts, but Dad used to tell it differently.