That night, leaving word that whoever might be the first to stir in the morning should call me, I unrolled my blankets under a spruce somewhat apart from the crowd, and was soon asleep. Before daylight I was astir, had a cup of coffee and a bite, and was off. Upon the previous afternoon I had picked the direction I would take, which was to skirt certain openings in the forest below. Fresh sign I saw that assured me of the excellence of the range for bear, but I encountered nothing alive worth powder and ball, and returned to camp about 9 o'clock. I was greeted by Leonard with the joyful news that during my absence he had seen from camp a big bear cross the side of the mountain only a mile or so away, and disappear over the ridge. This happened about 7 o'clock. The chief herder and my companion received the information somewhat in a spirit of respectful incredulity, but Leonard assured me that it was so, and we made preparations to follow the trail toward night. Meanwhile I breakfasted and slept.
We left camp about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and without the slightest difficulty found the beast's trail exactly where the Mexican had said we should. Before this time I had killed an odd bear or so in Colorado, and had had some little experience in unraveling the trail of game. It may be rather priding myself upon the accomplishment, but let me here acknowledge the superiority of professional talent. Leonard, to all intents and purposes, had been born and raised on a sheep range. His earliest recollections had been of the sheep camps of the Sierras, of the reputation of the arch-enemy of the flock and of the havoc which he works. From infancy he, like all the herders, had been constantly upon the lookout for bear sign; it was his one keenest intellectual accomplishment and diversion. The result of this special training was such an acuteness of vision and nice discrimination of eye that he could clearly distinguish a bear's footprints upon the naked sand and gravel where at a quick glance I was unable to see any indication whatever. A single grain of sand displaced was sufficient to arrest his eye; he detected it instantly. To him the minutest particle had its weather-beaten side as well as a boulder. A bear could not put his foot upon the ground without leaving an impress which he could detect. His talent was so quick and unerring that we soon organized a division of labor. He was to concentrate his energies and attention upon the trail, while I, by his side or a step in advance, when the trail read itself and permitted such a course, was to watch ahead and around for both of us. Fortunately this arrangement was satisfactory to him. The hardest of the trail to decipher was where it was written in condensed shorthand across a mountain slide or coulisse of naked granite boulders. Here not one trace was to be found in a dozen yards. Fortunately we could trust in the genius of the bear; he was aware, as well as La Place, that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. He undoubtedly knew exactly where he was heading. We had his general direction, and by beating about for a tuft of grass here with a blade displaced, a stray gooseberry bush there with a leaf awry, and yonder a patch of thicker vegetation, betraying interference, we soon succeeded, owing mainly to Leonard's genius as a pathfinder, in getting through a couple of acres of this most vague and illegible pedography. At last we had the trail upon the mountain side once more, where, after such difficulties surmounted, following it was a comparative luxury.
After having proceeded in this manner for perhaps two hours, we entered timber, and were obliged to advance with greater caution to avoid the slightest sound which might betray our presence and give the alarm. With two men the risk of doing this is increased in geometrical ratio. One person alone, traveling through the woods, may, and almost certainly will, break an occasional twig under foot. If game is within hearing, the sound will inevitably be detected; the deer, if it be a deer, will lift his head and listen; but if the hunter stops and waits for a time, the chances are that the animal will, after due interval of silence, resume his feeding if so engaged, or his rumination, be it physical or moral, and the alarm may not prove fatal. Not so when companions are hunting together. It would seem as if the second man, with dreadful promptness, never failed to snap his twig also, which sounds as loud as a pistol coming upon the strained attention of the listening beast, who is off like a streak, leaving the disappointed hunter, as he hears him crashing away, to moralize that company in the chase halves the pleasure and doubles the sorrow. The only safety where union is necessary is to proceed with exaggerated and fantastic caution.
Leonard was a treasure in this. He had dreamt of grizzlies all his life, yet had never been in at the death. His heart was in the hunt—he fairly sighed for gore. We crept into the woods as silent as panthers and as "purry" in the ardor of the chase. After a mile or so our bear had come to an immense fallen spruce, lying across the trail, with the big butt, five or six feet in diameter, to our right, the top pointing up the hill. Over the middle of this, at right angles, lay another large tree, with the point toward us. I felt that behind the first of these, if I had been the original and unmolested settler in these parts, as the bear was, with all the world before me where to choose, I should have made the bed for my morning nap. It was long after daylight when he had reached this covert. He had doubtless been stirring soon after sunset the evening before; he had, it is not unlikely, been traveling all night; had feasted heartily upon a sheep during that interval, and by the time he reached this place, which may have been in his mind from the start, was feeling comfortably lazy and inclined to the refreshment of sleep. Behind that tree, so admirably suited for the purpose, I trusted that he might still remain. The big end would protect a cool space from the heat of the morning sun, and we might yet be so lucky as to find him in his lair beneath its shelter. A signal to Leonard was enough, and we proceeded to circle the fallen timber, which fortunately the wind permitted, with all the caution of which we were capable. Had the gentleman we were after been our dearest friend at the crisis of a fever, we could not have tiptoed about his bed with more solicitude lest we disturb sweet slumber. The big tree lay in front of us; by this we crept at a respectful distance, and then approached the further end of the tree lying across it. With great care I sneaked up until I could look over its trunk at the desired point. Alas! no bear had made his nest there.
Sorrowfully, but without a sound, I crawled upon the intervening log and slowly stood erect. There, directly beneath me, where I could have jumped into it most comfortably, was the deserted form of the bear, which he had dug in the morning within an hour after Leonard had seen him, and in which the greater part of the day had been spent, until he had stirred abroad for water, with which to wash down the recollection of his muttons. Although ardently hoping that he was behind the tree, I had not in the least expected to find his bed in this particular place. Had he stayed quietly there until our arrival, he would have given one of us a delicious surprise, and the mutual agitation of the moment might have induced a shot with unpremeditated haste, and possibly have caused me to get off that fallen spruce tree in somewhat quicker time than I had climbed it. One naturally would not feel any keen desire to display his acrobatic skill in walking a log for the entertainment of an infuriated grizzly. A few hairs proclaimed him a cinnamon, who is either a variety of the grizzly or his first cousin—authorities differ; at all events, he closely resembles him except in color, which, although of a uniform light, fady brown, might be an extreme type of the "sorrel top" of the Rockies. In size the cinnamon fully holds his own with the grizzly; I should say that his head was rather longer. The generous excavation which this one had made showed that he was no mean representative of his species.
Not twenty yards away, and near the end of the big tree where I had expected to find him, was a little spring. To this, still without a word, we proceeded, saw where he had stood to drink more than once, doubtless long and deep. To our left, in the soft earth, lay his retreating footsteps—a continuation of the general direction of his previous course. A moment's pause for closer scrutiny, a smile and a whispered word exchanged—just to show that we were not bored; then, respectful of the silence of the darkening woods, we were again upon the trail. It was now easy to see why he had left his lair; it faced the west, and the heat of the afternoon sun had annoyed him, warmly clad and irritable with high living.
We had proceeded only about a stone's throw further when I caught a glimpse of our bear. Within twenty paces, under the shadow of a tree at the edge of a cool, umbrageous thicket, between him and the setting sun, lay the beast we were after; or, as I for a moment thought, judging from the great inchoate mass of brown fur, a pair, perhaps male and female, or one, it might be, a yearling cub. With finger lifted I signaled Leonard to stop. A great head was slowly raised and turned my way. A bullet between the eyes and down it went again, and I threw another cartridge into the chamber, expecting to see the second bear spring to his feet, ready to do whatever, in his judgment, the occasion required, either to fight or to run. Whichever he might elect to do, it was well to be prepared. "Give him another shot," said the prudent Leonard, and I fired a second time, sending this ball quartering and, like the first, through the brain; then I realized that there was but one, and he of creditable size. We soon had him out in the open, for nothing is easier to roll about than a bear just killed. He is like a great jelly-fish, and I have seen a little terrier no larger than a rabbit worry and shake a great carcass four times as large as the most commodious kennel he could desire, provided he were a sensible pup and had the comfortable instinct of wild things for snugness rather than ostentatious display. Enough of daylight remained for us to get his pelt off, with head and claws unskinned and attached, and to hurry over the mountain by moonlight with our trophy, a junk of rank meat for such as might desire it not forgotten.
We were cordially welcomed back to camp, and, after the usual pow-wow, the cook, with due formality, with Mexican chile and Spanish politeness, proceeded to concoct the boasted chile con oso—a much overrated dish when made of a tough old cinnamon he bear. After I had turned in I heard much laughter, and subsequently learned that it was at an incident of the day. As we were starting out in the afternoon, and before we had struck the bear's trail, in order to avoid any possibility of a premature shot I had casually inquired of Leonard if he wished to earn five dollars.
"Certainly, Señor, I am always glad to get the chance."
"Well, don't shoot then until I give the word, and you shall have it."