True Bear Stories

by Joaquin Miller

Everybody’s blood seemed to be congealing, and as the pack was loose and the antidote accessible, an ounce of prevention was administered to each man, and Balaam was rewarded for his timely agility with a handful of sugar.

No more accidents occurred, and late in the afternoon the cavalcade slid, coasted and scrambled down the last steep hill into the Sespe Canyon, where a camp was made under an immense oak beside a deep, rocky pool. That evening, around the camp-fire, some strange bear stories were evolved from either the memories or imagination of the hunters.

In the morning the search for bear signs was resumed and prosecuted until noon without success. Dad was lured by the swarms of trout in the stream, and went fishing. Dad is not a scientific fly fisherman. His favorite method is to select a shady nook on the bank, sit down with his back against a rock, tie a sinker to a large and gaudy fly, and angle on the bottom for the biggest trout he can see. He generally carries a book in his pocket, and when the trout remains unresponsive to the allurements of the gaudy fly, he fastens his rod to a bush and reads until he falls asleep.

In the afternoon one of the party went out over a long, brushy ridge, and the correspondent pushed on down the gorge in search of bear signs. All the bear tracks led up toward the Hot Springs Canyon, indicating that the grizzlies had begun their annual migration to the Alamo, Frazier and Pine mountains, where large bands of sheep are herded through the summer. Some of the tracks were large and fresh, and a person might come upon a bear at any time in the bottom of the canyon. Preparations were made for following the bears and directions given for an early start in the morning. The Doctor recollected that he had important business in Santa Paula that required his immediate attention, and he wouldn’t have time to follow the grizzlies through the rugged passes of the mountains. Accordingly, he and Dad decided to remain in the Sespe camp a day or two, enjoy the fishing, and then return to Santa Paula, and the bear hunting party that saddled up and struck out on the trail of the grizzly in the morning was reduced to three.

The trail led through the Hot Springs Canyon, where boiling hot sulphur water flows out of the ground in a stream large enough to sensibly affect the temperature of the Sespe River, into which it runs. This canyon was formerly a beautiful camping spot, and was resorted to by many persons who believed that bathing in sulphur water would restore their health, but about three years ago a cloudburst uprooted all the trees and converted the green cienaga into a rocky desolate flat, as barren and unattractive as the sharp, treeless peaks surrounding the canyon. A few mountain sheep inhabit the mountains about the Hot Springs, and occasionally one is seen standing upon some high and inaccessible cliff, but it is very seldom that a hunter succeeds in getting a pair of big horns.

The next camp was on the Piru Creek, where it runs through the Mutaw ranch. One of the most promising mining districts in this part of the State takes its name from the Piru, and in years gone by a great deal of gold was taken from the diggings along the stream. One of the most successful miners was Mike Brannan, whose cabins and mining appliances lie unused and decaying about six miles from the place where the expedition camped.

From the camp on the Mutaw the expedition followed Piru Creek down to Lockwood, and the latter up to the divide between Lockwood Valley and the Cuddy ranch at the foot of Mount Pinos, called Sawmill Mountain by the settlers. The mountain is about 10,000 feet high, and is covered with heavy pine timber. Ever since Haggin & Carr’s sheep have been on the mountain, the bears from forty miles around have made annual marauding expeditions, and kept the herders on the jump all the summer. The first band of sheep and the Examiner expedition arrived at the old Sawmill simultaneously this year, and the Basque who was herding the band, having a very lively sense of the danger of his situation, pitched his tent close to the camp, where he would be under the protection of three rifles. The Basque had never been on the mountain before, but he had heard about the bears and their audacious raids, and he was not at all enamored of his job. When the campfires were started, and the forest became an enclosing wall of gloom, behind which lurked all the mysteries and menaces of the mountains, the Basque came shyly into camp, bringing a shoulder of mutton with which to establish friendly relations, and under the mellowing influence of a glass of something hot he became confidential and as communicative as his broken jargon of French and California Spanish would permit.

He had come to the mountain reluctantly, and having been told about the herder whose hand was torn off by a grizzly last year, he was still more unwilling to remain. He would stay as long as the Examiner party remained near him, but when the hunters went away he proposed to quit and hasten back to the plains, where he would have nothing worse than the coyotes to encounter. Every night after that, so long as the hunters were in that camp, the Basque came and sat at the fire until bedtime, talking about los osos, and when the grass and water gave out and the expedition was obliged to move camp about two miles, the gentle shepherd packed his blankets over the trail to Bakersfield, leaving his flock in the care of a leathery skinned bear-hardened Mexican.

The bears were later this year than usual in coming to the mountain, probably because the warm weather was longer delayed, and for many days the hunters scanned the trails in the canyons in vain for the footprints of grizzlies. The first indication of their arrival was given in a somewhat startling way to the correspondent one evening as he was slowly toiling through a deep, rocky ravine back to camp, after a weary tramp over the foothills of the big mountain.

The sun had set and the bottom of the ravine was dark as night. The belated searcher for bear signs skirted a dense willow thicket, and brushed against the bushes with his elbow. “Woof! Woof!” snorted a bear within ten feet of him, invisible in the thicket. His heart thumped and his rifle lock clicked, together, and which sound was the louder he could not tell. For a few seconds he stood at the edge of the thicket with his rifle ready, expecting the rush of the bear, but the animal was not in a warlike mood and did not rush, and the hunter cautiously backed away about twenty yards up the steep side of the ravine. The cracking of brush indicated that bruin was moving in the thicket, but nothing could be seen in the gathering gloom. Two or three large rocks rolled down into the willows started the bear out on a run and he could be heard crashing his way down the ravine and splashing into the pools as he went. The remainder of the journey back to camp was made through the open pine forest on the top of the mountain.