The silver-tip was badly blown, and the three dogs which had stayed with him were so tired that they sat up at a respectful distance and panted and lolled. The first rope went over Bruin’s head and one paw. There lies the danger. But instantly number two flew straight to the mark, and the ponies surged, while Bruin stretched out with a roar. A third rope got his other hind-leg, and the puncher dismounted and tied it to a tree. The roaring, biting, clawing mass of hair was practically helpless, but to kill him was an undertaking.
“Why didn’t you brand him and turn him loose?” I asked of the cowboy.
“Well,” said the puncher, in his Texan drawl, “we could have branded him all right, but we might have needed some help in turning him loose.”
They pelted him with malpais, and finally stuck a knife into a vital part, and then, loading him on a pony, they brought him in. It was a daring performance, but was regarded by the “punchers” as a great joke.
Mickler and I rode into camp, thinking on the savagery of man. One never heard of a bear which travelled all the way from New Mexico to Chicago to kill a man, and yet a man will go 3000 miles to kill a bear—not for love or fear or hate or meat; for what, then? But Mickler and I had not killed a bear, so we were easy.
THE BEAR AT BAY
One by one the tired hunters and dogs struggled into camp all disappointed, except the dogs, which could not tell us what had befallen them since morning. The day following the dogs started a big black bear, which made a good run up a bad place in the hills, but with the hunters scrambling after in full cry. The bear treed for the dogs, but on sighting the horsemen he threw himself backward from the trunk and fell fifteen feet among the dogs, which latter piled into him en masse, the little fox-terriers being particularly aggressive. It was a tremendous shake-up of black hair and pups of all colors; but the pace was too fast for Bruin, and he sought a new tree. One little foxie had been rolled over, and had quite a job getting his bellows mended. This time the bear sat on a limb very high up, and General Miles put a .50-calibre ball through his brain, which brought him down with a tremendous thump, when the pups again flew into him, and “wooled him,” as the cowboys put it, to their hearts’ content.
While our bear-hunting is not the thing we are most proud of, yet the method is the most sportsmanlike, since nothing but the most desperate riding will bring one up with the bear in the awful country which they affect. The anticipation of having a big silver-tip assume the aggressive at any moment is inspiriting. Indeed, they often do; for only shortly before one had sprung from a thicket on to the hind-quarters of one of Mr. Stevens’s cowboy’s ponies, and it was only by the most desperate work on the part of his companion, who rode up close and shot the bear with his six-shooter, that saved his comrade’s life. The horse was killed. When one thinks of the enormous strength of the silver-tip, which can overpower the mightiest steer, and bend and break its neck or tear its shoulder from its body at a stroke, one is able to say, “Do not hunt a bear unless thy skin is not dear to thee.” Then the dogs must be especially trained to run bear, since the country abounds in deer, and it is difficult to train dogs to ignore their sight and scent. The cowboys account for the number of the bear in their country from the fact that it is the old Apache and Navajo range, and the incoherent mind of the savage was impressed with the rugged mass of fur and the grinning jaws of the monster which crossed his path, and he was awed by the dangers of the encounter—arrow against claw. He came to respect the apparition, and he did not know that life is only sacred when in the image of the Creator. He did not discriminate as to the value of life, but with his respect for death there grew the speculation, which to him became a truth, that the fearsome beast was of the other world, and bore the lost souls of the tribe. He was a vampire; he was sacred. O Bear!
