The shock was so sudden and the effect on him so deadly that he apparently thought nothing of fight, but only of seeking a place to die in peace.
He wheeled and shot into a neighboring thicket with the speed of an arrow. I fired at him again as he disappeared. He crashed through the jungle out into the open woods, turned to the right and went across a ridge as if Satan himself were after him. As the big gray mass shot through a clear space between two trees I gave him another speeder, and then he disappeared beyond a ridge.
The snow had melted rapidly and the ground was bare in places, so that I had some trouble in trailing the bear, but wherever he crossed a patch of snow his trail was bespattered with blood. I followed over the ridge and through scattering jack pines, about two hundred yards, and found him lying dead near the trail. My first and third bullets had gone in behind his shoulder only an inch apart. The first had passed clear through him, and the other had lodged against the skin on the opposite side. Several ribs were broken on either side, and his lungs and other portions of his interior were ground into sausage; yet so great was his vitality and tenacity to life that he was able to make this distance at a speed that would have taxed the best horse in the country, and if he had seen fit to attack me instead of running away he would probably have made sausage of me.
But what feasting and what revelry there was in camp that night. It was a young bear, fat as butter, and rib roasts and cutlets were devoured in quantities that would have shocked the modesty of a tramp. Not until well into the night did we cease to eat, and wrap ourselves in our blankets. We staid several days in the cañon after that, and killed plenty of elk and other game.
The skin of the grizzly is one of the most valuable trophies a sportsman can obtain on any field, and its rarity, and the danger and excitement attending the taking of it, the courage it bespeaks on the part of the hunter, render it a prize of which the winner may justly feel proud for a lifetime.
The best localities in which to hunt the grizzly bear--that is, those most accessible and in which he is now most numerous--are the Big Horn, Shoshone, Wind River, Bear Tooth, Belt, and Crazy Mountains, in Wyoming and Montana, all of which may be easily reached by way of the Northern Pacific road.