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"They say the baldface grizzlies are thick in the Yukon Basin," Kit explained. "Well, I've got only one suit of underclothes, and I'm going after the bear-meat, that's all." Half the time the wind blew a gale, and Smoke Bellew staggered against it along the beach. In the gray of dawn a dozen boats were being loaded with the precious outfits packed across Chilcoot.

The grizzlies are chained by one leg and the bulls let loose at 'em. The bulls charge like all possessed, but they find it hard to do much damage to Caleb, whose hide is like a double-extra rhinoceros. The grizzlies ginerally git the best of it; an' if they was let loose, they'd chaw up the bulls in no time, they would.

The bears are the working people of the show, and the big grizzlies are the walking delegates who control the amalgamated association of working bears, and the occupants of the other cages have got to cater to Uncle Ephraim, the walking delegate, or be placed on the unfair list and slugged.

One morning they met and shot at five grizzly bears, but none were killed. The next morning in a mountain gully eight ugly grizzlies faced them. In desperation they determined to attack. Wood and Wilson were to advance and fire. The others held themselves in reserve one of them up a tree. At fifty feet each selected a bear and fired. Wilson killed his bear; Wood thought he had finished his.

I promised Uncle Dick I'd bring him some bearskins." "Black bear or grizzlies?" asked Alex, smiling. "Grizzly." "Well, I don't know about that," demurred Alex. "Of course I don't deny you may have killed a bear or so up in Alaska, but down here most of us are willing to let grizzlies alone when we see them." "This white-face bear, he'll be bad," Moise nodded vigorously.

Jonas Billings had put the matter in a nutshell when he said: "It ain't natural, them two, at Tralee. For marrying her he ought to be tarred and feathered, and for the way he treats her he ought to be let loose in the ha'nts of the grizzlies. What he done to that girl is a crime ag'in' the law. If there was any real spunk in the Methodists, they'd spit him out like pus."

I loved outdoor life and hunting. Some way a grizzly bear would come in when I tried to explain forestry to my brother. "Hunting grizzlies!" he cried. "Why, Ken, father says you've been reading dime novels." "Just wait, Hal, till he comes out here. I'll show him that forestry isn't just bear-hunting."

"And we turned off at Fort Hall, where the Oregon emigration went north'ard, and swung south for Californy," was his way of concluding the narrative of that arduous journey. "And Bill Ping and me used to rope grizzlies out of the underbrush of Cache Slough in the Sacramento Valley."

When complimented for his skill in hunting he scornfully said: "Oh, that's nothing. Anyone can kill small game; but buffaloes and grizzlies they are the boys." During the winter of his sixteenth year a brother of Mr. Burns returned from Kansas, which was then a strange and far-off land, and from him Harold drew vast streams of talk. The boy was insatiate when the plains were under discussion.

Don't worry about coming to blows with the bear; I have noticed from long experience that it is not the times that you think a bear is going to give you trouble that it happens, but always when least expected. I have trailed wounded grizzlies time and time again, and was more or less worried all the while, but never had one turn on me yet.