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The undisputed lord of the range was an old silver-tip grizzly, of great size and evil temper. Furious at the unexpected trespass on his sovereignty, yet well aware of his powerlessness against the human creature that could strike from very far off with lightning and thunder, he had made up his mind at once to withdraw to some remoter range.
The skin of one very big bear which I killed in the Bighorn has proved a standing puzzle to almost all the old hunters to whom I have showed it; rarely do any two of them agree as to whether it is a grisly, a silver-tip, a cinnamon, or a "smut-face."
The buffaloes did not appear here, but they saw many signs of bear, mule deer, panther or mountain lion, and other game. They camped one night in a pine grove by the side of a brook that came rushing and foaming down from the mountains, and the next morning Albert, who walked some distance from the water, saw a silver-tip bear lapping the water of the stream.
They insist on many species; not merely the black and the grisly but the brown, the cinnamon, the gray, the silver-tip, and others with names known only in certain localities, such as the range bear, the roach-back, and the smut-face. But, in spite of popular opinion to the contrary, most old hunters are very untrustworthy in dealing with points of natural history.
"The men, at least the kind I mix with, don't care for grizzly-skins, and to enjoy anything you've got to have sympathetic company don't you know that?" he asked, looking admiringly at Dicksie. "I've got another skin for you a silver-tip," he added in deep, gentle tones, addressing Marion. "It has a fine head, as fine as I ever saw in the Smithsonian.
I have myself seen the skins of two bears killed on the upper waters of Tongue River; one was that of a male, one of a female, and they had evidently just mated; yet one was distinctly a "silver-tip" and the other a "cinnamon."
"But there's no use warning you young rascals, I suppose," he grinned. "You're the kind that looks for trouble as naturally as a bee hunts for clover. I'll bet at this very minute you're honing to get after a silver-tip. Own up, now, ain't you?" The boys laughed and flushed a little self-consciously. "Hardly that, perhaps," answered Bert.
It was a reckless thing for her to do, for such a call might bring upon her a mountain lion or ever-watchful silver-tip; but Snana did not think of that. In a few minutes she heard the light patter of hoofs, and caught a glimpse of a doe running straight toward the fawn's hiding-place.
Another hunter will call any big brindled bear a grisly no matter where it is found; and he and his companions will dispute by the hour as to whether a bear of large, but not extreme, size is a grisly or a silver-tip. In Oregon the cinnamon bear is a phase of the small black bear; in Montana it is the plains variety of the large mountain silver-tip.
At last he struck his breast with his clenched fist, drawing sound as from a drum, and his voice rumbled forth as does the surf from an ocean cavern. 'I am the Bear, the Silver-Tip and the Son of the Silver-Tip!
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