"'Dick, I see some grizzly bar tracks down in the gully last night. Let's go an' hunt up the varmint. I would have follered him up last night, only it war too dark.'
"In course I agreed, an' we ketched our hosses, which we had picketed close by the cabin, an' started out--ole Bill leadin' the way.
"Huntin' a grizzly is fine sport sometimes; but if a feller is any way skeery, he had better not take a hand in it. Even the Injuns don't keer to meddle with the varmint, unless a dozen or two of 'em, well mounted an' armed, can ketch him out in clar open ground; an' even then they have to handle themselves round purty lively, for if the bar onct gets his claws on a hoss he has to go under. You couldn't hire a red-skin to go into the mountains alone an' hunt up a grizzly. The varmint allers lives in the thickest part of the woods; an' if you don't plug him through the brain at the first shot, or if your hoss gets tangled in the bushes, you're in a mighty onpleasant fix the first thing you know. But me an' Bill had hunted grizzlies plenty o' times, an' allers come out o' the fight right side up, an' we war used to the sport.
"Wal, as I was sayin', we started out toward the place where Bill had seed the trail o' the bar, an', arter four hours' hard ridin' over rocks an' fallen logs an' thick bushes, we come to the gully. It war 'bout a hundred feet deep an' a quarter of a mile broad, an' the banks on both sides war as steep as the roof o' this cabin, an' covered with bushes so thick that a hoss couldn't hardly work a way through 'em. It war a fine place for a bar, an' many a trapper wouldn't have liked the idea o' goin' down in there to hunt one up, an' I couldn't help sayin':
"'Yes,' answered ole Bill. 'But look over there;' an' he pinted acrost the gully to a sort o' clar spot, where there warn't no bushes, an' the timber didn't grow very thick. 'If the bar gets arter us,' he went on to say, 'we must run for that ar place; an' if we onct get him up there, he's ourn, sure.'
"Arter stoppin' a few minits to give our hosses a chance to rest, we took a look at our rifles, to see that they war all right, an' then begun to work our way down into the gully. It must have tuk us an hour to reach the bottom, for the brake war higher than our hosses' heads, an' it war hard work to get through it. We had sent out the dogs--we had two of the best bar dogs I ever happened to see--when we first started down, and jest as we reached the bottom of the gully, they give notice, by their howlin', that they had found the grizzly's trail. We rid up to the place as fast as we could, an' ole Bill jumped off his hoss an' examined the tracks. They war fresh. The bar had jest passed along, an' we knowed that he warn't far off.