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One comments on the superior prowess of the roach-back; the explanation being that a bear in early spring is apt to be ravenous from hunger. The next insists that the California grisly is the only really dangerous bear; while another stoutly maintains that it does not compare in ferocity with what he calls the "smaller" silver-tip or cinnamon. And so on, and so on, without end.
An' if you leave him alone he'll not bother you, but he's bad in a corner." "He scared away the coyotes." "Youngster, even a silver-tip thet's a grizzly bear will make tracks away from a cougar. I lent my pack of hounds to a pard over near Springer. If I had them we'd put thet cougar up a tree in no time." "Are there many lions cougars here?" "Only a few. Thet's why there's plenty of deer.
In surprise, I asked him if it were not a fact that the California grizzly was extinct. He said this was true, but the silver-tip bear of Wyoming was a grizzly and its range extended westward to the Sierra Nevada Mountains; so it could properly be classified as a Pacific Coast variety. He cited Professor Merriam's monograph on the classification of grizzlies to prove his statements.
The old man who told me this story added that young as he was, he had some power, so that even a grizzly did not care to tackle him. I believe it is a fact that a silver-tip will dare anything except a bell or a lasso line, so that accidentally the boy had hit upon the very thing which would drive him off.
At last he silently returned the pipe to Matogee, with whom it had begun its rounds. I was with him. It was by a very little that he saved his life. I will tell you how it happened. "I was hunting with these two men, Nageedah and Chadozee. We came to some wild cherry bushes. I began to eat of the fruit when I saw a large silver-tip crawling toward us.
It was now cured, that is, jerked, and would keep any length of time. While the frame was ready they jerked an elk, two mule deer, a big silver-tip bear that Dick shot on the mountain side, and many fish that they caught in the lake and the little river. They would scale the fish, cut them open down the back, and then remove the bone.
Slowly the light spread and as slowly the shadows stole away until the October moon looked down on the great Indian camp a hundred lodges, each as perfect in design as the tusks of a young silver-tip, and all looking ghostly white in the still of the autumn night.
For myself, I haven't any ambition that way. I'm perfectly willing to give him his full half of the road whenever we meet. And we won't meet at all, if I see him first. I've had more than one tussle with an old silver-tip, and I've got a few hides up at the house to serve as reminders. But it's always been when it was more dangerous to run than it was to stay and fight it out.
There, slowly leaving the dense edge of the woods, was a new bear, not so large as the first, but we could see at a glance that she had a beautiful coat of a dark silver-tip color.
My two men came galloping up, and shortly dismounted, and we all descended to the place where the bear was lying, almost dead. In fact, it died while we were standing over it. "Well done; that was a fine shot, and we've got the grizzly bear at last," exclaimed Jem Bourne. This is not the bear that Big Bill ran from," I replied; "impossible, this is a silver-tip, and not a true grizzly."
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