The dogs were Tom's real asset, and his hobby. There were five of them. The two best, Baldy and Button, were Kentucky coon hounds in their prime, probably being descendants of the English fox hound with the admixture of harrier and bloodhound strains. Their breed has been in the family for thirty years. Tom took great pride in his pack, trained them to run nothing but bear and mountain lions, and never let anybody else touch them. When not hunting they are kept fastened by a sliding leash to a long heavy wire. Their diet was boiled cracked wheat and cracklings, raw apples, and bear meat. They never tasted deer meat or beef. I never saw more intelligent nor better conditioned hounds.
With the same stock he has hunted ever since he was a boy, and their lineage is more important than that of the Murphys. He has taken from ten to twenty bears every winter with these dogs for the past thirty years.
We were to stay right in Tom's house, and go by horseback to the bear grounds next morning. We had a supper which included bear steaks from a previous hunt, and doughnuts fried in bear grease, which they say is the best possible material for this culinary process, and later we greased our bows with bear grease, and our shoes with a mixture of bear fat and rosin. So we felt ready for bear.
Then we spent a delightful evening with the family before the big fireplace, played our soft music, and all turned in for an early start in the morning.
At four o'clock Tom began stirring around, building the fire and feeding the horses. An hour later we breakfasted and were ready to start. Light snow had fallen in the hills and the air was chill; the moon was sinking in the valley mist. These early morning hours in the country are strange to us who live so far from nature.
We mount and are off. As we go the horses see the trail that we cannot discern, vague forms slip past, a skunk steals off before us, an owl flaps noiselessly past, overhanging brush sweeps our faces, the dogs leashed in couples trot ahead of us like spectres in procession.
Thus we journey for nearly ten miles in the darkness, going up out of the valley, on to the foothills, through Windy Gap, past Sheep Corral, over the divide, heading toward the Little Van Duzen River.
All the while the dogs amble along, sniffing here and there at obscure scents, now loitering to investigate a moment, now standing and looking off into the dark. Tom knows by their actions what they think. "That's a coyote's trail," he says, "they've just crossed a deer scent, but they won't pay much attention to that." Their demeanor is self-possessed and un-excited.
At last, just before dawn, we arrive on a pine-covered hillside and the dogs become more eager. This is the bear country. They cross the canyon here to get to the forest of young oak trees, beyond where the autumn crop of acorns lies ready to fatten them for their long winter sleep.