So these towns, born of their high hopes, died, as their dreams flickered out, and were abandoned when new hopes sprung up in their breasts.

I forgot my hunger in unraveling the mysteries of the silent village, but my companion showed no such inclination. Being a pack burro, and having a prospector for a master, he had come to look upon tragedy with a philosophical eye. No doubt he had seen deserted towns before, and been the innocent victim of the desertion. He grew bored as I lingered over letters and the other evidence of bygone days and nudged me frequently to remind me of our original object in searching the cabins. At last he protested with a vigorous, "Aww-hee-awwhee, a-w-w-h-e-e—" Remembering his loyalty of the night before, to appease him I left off rummaging in those dust-covered cabins.

"All right, pal, I'll come. We'll leave this grave-yard right away and try our luck at fishing."

He seemed to understand for he capered about like a playful puppy.

I knew of several small streams below the town, alive with trout. I headed for the nearest one, the burro plodding patiently behind, silent, expectant.

The smell of smoke, coffee, and other camp odors came up the trail to meet us. Soon we came abruptly in sight of two prospectors who were eating a belated breakfast.

"Reckon you better have a bite with us," invited one of the men as he set the tin-can coffee pot upon the coals of their fire.

"Thet thar burro bin a pesterin' you?" asked the second man, fixing the burro with a searching gaze.

"Oh, no!" I denied, remembering my debt to the animal. "We put in the night together, and he even ate some of my hardtack this morning," I ended laughing.

"He's the tarnationist critter, always a galavantin' roun', an' a gittin' inter somebody's grub."

The burro chose to overlook these insults and drew near the fire, unostentatiously. The old prospector slipped him part of his breakfast.

"Which way you headin'?" asked the first man, plainly puzzled because I carried neither gun nor mining tools.

"To climb Arapahoe peak."

"Climb the peak," he repeated, much mystified.

"What's the idear?" the second wanted to know. "Goin' way off thar jes' to git up a mountain, when thar's plenty right hyar, higher ones too?" He indicated the ranges to the east.

"Any place up that way to get out of the rain?" I asked, for the clouds were dropping again with the threat of gathering storm.

The men exchanged glances. Abruptly the small one got to his feet and led the burro out of sight among the willows. The other man faced me.

"Better take a friend's advice and keep outen there," he swept a grimy hand westward.

"What's up?"

"Better do your climbin' round hyar," he replied suggestively.

"But I want to climb Arapahoe; I have heard the Indians used it for a signal mountain and..."

He beckoned me to follow, and led the way into the grove mysteriously. At length he stopped, peered about uneasily, then whispered.

"There's an ole cabin up yonder"—he faced toward Arapahoe—"that's ha'nted."

"Haunted?" my interest quickening, my fears of the depressing night forgotten.

He nodded—dead earnest.

"Are you sure about that? Did you ever see the, the——"

His look silenced me.

"Ole feller died up thar," he declared; "nobody knows how." His tone was awesome.

I made a move down the trail, thanking him for the meal.

"Wouldn't go, if I wus you," he persisted, following me as far as his camp.

Then, as I took the unused trail that led down toward North Park, he called after me:

"Remember, I've warned you!"

Fishing was good in the stream a few miles below their camp, and I soon had all the trout I wanted and was on my way to the round dome of Arapahoe peak, jutting above some clouds that were banked against its lower slope. Through the willow flats and a dense forest of spruce, the way led up between parallel ridges over a game trail, deeply worn and recently used. I was right upon a log wall before I knew it. Then I circled and saw that the wall was part of an old cabin built in a little opening of the forest.

A section of the roof had fallen in and the fireplace had lost part of its chimney; the slab door had a broken hinge, and swayed uneasily on the one remaining, and the dirt floor bore no traces of recent habitation.

Having gathered wood for the night, for I had no blankets and must keep the fire burning, I broiled several trout for my supper. How I relished that meal!

Supper over, I climbed upon a cliff behind the cabin and watched the moon rise silently above a ridge to the eastward, and listened to the faint clamor of the coyotes far below. Shadows crept closer to the cliffs as the moon climbed higher, while from the peaks above came the moaning of the wind. Never had been such a night!

It was late when I went inside the old cabin, and the fire had burned low. I put on fresh wood, removed my shoes, and stretched out before the comforting blaze. I was asleep almost instantly. From time to time, as had become my habit, I roused enough to feed the fire; then quickly dropped off to sleep again.

Just when, I am not sure, but I think about midnight, I awoke with a strange feeling that an unseen presence was in the room. The prospector's warning came to me vaguely, and I tried to rouse up to listen, but I dropped back to sleep almost immediately.

Later, coming awake suddenly as though some one had shaken me, I sat up and, rubbing my eyes to open them, glanced around, but the interior of the cabin was dark, only the stars sparkled close above the broken roof. I yawned expansively, rolled nearer the low fire, and fell asleep.

The next I knew I heard a thud close to my head, and I was wide awake upon the instant. I lay still, trying to convince myself that there was nothing in the cabin but myself; when a hot breath struck my face. I got up on end—so did my hair. I started for the door.

A bulky shadow moved between it and myself. I postponed going in that direction for the moment and, turning, felt my way to a dark corner back by the fireplace. From the corner across the hearth came a faint sound. Thinking the time propitious for a prompt exit, I felt my way along the wall, turned the corner and made for the door.

Unfortunately, my uninvited guest had the same thought, for as I sprang for the opening, I bumped into him, and the creaky slab door banged shut, leaving the cabin blacker than ever.

An idea shot through my head. If the visitor, whatever it was—ha'nt or otherwise—wanted the location near the door, it could have it. Far be it from me to be discourteous. I groped my way back to the fireplace, stumbling over my wood as I went. I had a fleeting notion to fling fresh wood on the fire which had almost burned out. Again I collided with my dusky visitor.

I hesitated no longer. I would vacate the cabin instantly, for good and all, without stopping to gather up my few belongings. Across the dirt floor I dashed, grabbed the creaky door and jerked it open.

But before I could dart through I was shoved aside. In panic I sought that exit, but was buffeted about, and finally knocked headlong on the ground.

Thoroughly scared, I leaped to my feet, ready to run.

Standing a few feet in front of me, big ears thrust forward inquiringly, was the friendly burro of the night before.



CHAPTER FOURTEEN

BEARS AND BUGBEARS

In my childish estimation, bear stories rivaled the tales of mad gold rushes, thundering bisons and savage Indians. No chore was so hard nor so long but that I managed to complete it in time to take my place in the fireside circle and listen to accounts of those huge animals that lived in the Rocky Mountains and were fiercer than any other bears in the world. "Ursus horribilis," my father called them, and a delicious little shudder would run down my back at the sound of the words. There was talk, too, of hunters who had tracked these monsters to their lairs and overcome them. Early I decided that when I went West, I would become, besides other things, a mighty bear hunter. The cows I drove to pasture were "ursus horribilis" (how I reveled in those words!) fleeing before me, and I was stalking them through the wilds with rifle upon my arm, and pistol and hunting knife in my belt! I planned to discard the ragged overalls and clumsy "clodhoppers" of the farm, as soon as I reached the mountains, for smoke-tanned, Indian-made buckskin suit and moccasins, all beaded and fringed. I wondered if the Indians wore coonskin caps like Davy Crockett—I felt it absolutely necessary that I should have one to wear to meet my first bear.

My first venture into the woods below the Parson's ranch I remember vividly, because I was filled with eager, yet fearful anticipation. I expected to meet a grizzly around every bowlder. I kept wondering how fast a bear could run; I halted frequently beside trees, for I remembered my father's saying grizzlies did not climb, so I planned to shin up the tallest tree in the woods should one come in sight. In my dreams back on the farm, my only fear had been lest all the grizzlies be killed before I reached the Rockies; barring such dire calamity, I had never had a doubt of my prowess. But somehow, when at last I found myself alone in the dark forest, it seemed the better part of valor to postpone the actual encounters until I should become more skillful with my old black-powder rifle. So obsessed was I by the thought of bears that on my first excursions into the wilds, a rock never rolled down a slope nor dropped from a cliff, a crash sounded in a thicket, but that I was sure a bear was mysteriously responsible. I dreamed of them, day and night, until they became bugbears, grizzly bugbears!

Considering my long-avowed intentions, my first camp alone in the Wild Basin country was not entirely unfortunate, for there, that first exciting afternoon, I met a bear face to face. Of course, I gave him the right of way. Was I not the intruder and he the rightful resident? Though years have elapsed since I dropped my rifle and sped in instant flight down the mountain side toward camp, I still like to think that my marvelous speed discouraged "ursus horribilis" and, therefore, he turned tail.

During my first summer in the mountains, I saw bears several times, in each instance going about their business and making no move to attack me. After these glimpses of them I gathered courage and decided to postpone my career as a hunter no longer. Bears were the objectives of my hunting expeditions, but they always succeeded in eluding me. Many times in stalking them I came upon fresh tracks showing they had broken into flight at my approach. One day I turned homeward, empty-handed, and learned later I had been within gunshot of one without catching sight of him.

Gradually my respect for them grew. The one I had watched stalk the marmot increased my admiration of their cunning. I eventually learned that they are extremely alert and agile, despite their seemingly stupid lumbering about, that they employ keen eyes and sensitive ears and high-power noses to the best advantage. As my respect for them grew, my ambition to become a mighty hunter of them gave way to a desire to learn more about them, to observe them in their natural state and study their habits. Just as they had inspired the most heroic dreams of my childhood, so they came to interest me more than any other animal of the wilds.

To the south of the Parson's ranch lay a wild, rugged region, which I called the "bad lands" on account of its jungle of woods, streams, swamps and terminal moraines, where bowlders of all sizes had been deposited by an ancient glacier. Through this tangle it was impossible to move without making noise, for a fire had swept over it and young lodge-pole trees had sprung up so close together that it was impossible to move without crashing into them. It was while on hands and knees in one of these thickets of new growth that I came upon bear tracks. The tracks were the largest I had even seen, so I gripped my gun tightly and peered about warily. The tracks pointed west, so I headed east, crashing through the trees ponderously, giving an occasional yell to help the bear keep out of my way.

I had gone about a hundred yards and was congratulating myself on my escape, when, to my horror, I discovered fresh tracks paralleling mine. Altering my course I went on, shouting vigorously, but with less confidence of scaring the bear out of the region.

In this extremity I recalled a bit of advice the Parson had given me.

"Don't ever let on you're afraid," he cautioned me one day, "because if you do the animal may turn on you."

With this in mind I faced about, took up the bear's trail, and with ready rifle, followed it. I kept looking behind me, to the right and to the left. The wind was blowing snow off the high peaks above and it made the tracks easily followed, for it kept them fresh. They turned aside, angled off, tacked and came back close to their first line. Around and around I trailed. A dozen times I stopped with my heart in my mouth, the rifle at my shoulder, but my alarm was occasioned by some other denizen of the wilds. Twice deer crashed away and left me rooted fast; and once, a cock grouse took the air from a rock just above my head, and nearly precipitated a stampede.

Finally I gave up the chase and started home, still watching warily for the bear. Better to guard against attack I climbed a little ridge that overlooked the irregular openings through which I had been trailing; and up there, paralleling my course, were bear tracks. Bruin had been craftily looking me over from his higher position. I at once advised that bear, by every means at my command, that he was no longer being hunted, and I made tracks for home as fast as my legs would let me, watching warily, or bearily, in all directions.

The Parson laughed heartily when I told of my experience that night as together with Aunt Jane we sat before the glowing fire of his hearth. Despite Aunt Jane's gentle excuses for me, I felt ashamed and determined to return next day and take up the bear's trail. Running away from an unseen bear was ludicrous, not to say cowardly. But I comforted myself with the assurance that even the Parson might have no other chance to run, if the bear saw him first!

The "bad lands" became the scene of many a hide-and-seek game, with the animals slipping silently away as I blundered along behind, puzzling out their trails, and imagining I was stalking them unawares. My many failures, while discouraging, were fruitful of experience, for I learned to hunt up-wind, thus discounting the high-power noses of the bears and muffling to some extent my clumsy movements from the deer. Repeated trips into that rough region informed me that one or two bears lived there, and that though they often left it to explore some other region, they eventually returned to their own home range. In tracing their movements I kept a sort of big-game Bertillon record; only instead of taking finger-prints, as is done with criminals, I measured footprints sketching them in my notebook, noting any slight peculiarity that would distinguish one track from another, and thus made positive identification possible.

I was compelled to get my information concerning the bears' movements mostly from their tracks, for they were far too crafty to be seen "in person"! They evidently moved on the assumption that vigilance was the price of life. They used their wits as well as their keen senses, seemed to reason as well as to have instinct. Moreover they made use of other animals for their own defense. They were ever alertly watching the significant movements of their neighbors, for signals of dangers beyond the range of their own senses. The quiet retreat of a fox or coyote apprised them of something unusual in the wind; the sudden up-winging of magpies and jays warned them of the approach of an enemy. They distinguished between the casual flight of birds and their flying when bound toward a kill of mountain lion or other beasts of prey. They were tuned-in on every animal broadcasting station on their range.

I learned that contrary to the lurid tales of the early explorers and hunters, they were peace-loving, deeming it no disgrace to run away from danger and leaving the vicinity as soon as man appeared in it. True, their curiosity sometimes tempted them to circle back and watch a man from some secure retreat, and at such times they slipped as silently from one thicket to another as a fox, sampling the air for tell-tale odors, standing erect to watch and listen.

Bit by bit, as I learned more about them, I came to revise my early, gory opinion of them. My impression had been formed chiefly from tales of Lewis and Clark's expedition; when they made their memorable trip across the continent, grizzlies were not afraid of men because the arrows of the Indians were ineffective against them. Whenever food attracted them to an Indian camp they moseyed fearlessly among the tepees, helping themselves to it and scattering the redskins. Their attempts thus to raid white men's camps gave rise to blood-curdling stories of their savagery, and their fearless, deadly attacks on men. These tales, while pure fiction, led to the belief that all bears were bad and should be killed, at every opportunity; and ever since Lewis and Clark saw the first one, men with dogs and guns, traps and poison have been on their trail. While I do not believe bears guilty of the many offenses charged them, I am sure that they had been the "life of the party" at many a camp, having been led out of their retirement by their small-boy curiosity.

In the region where first I followed a bear, or where it followed me, there ranged two of these animals, each recording a different track and displaying individual traits which I came to recognize. The smaller track had short claws that left their prints in the sand or soft places. In following this track I found that the maker was inclined to be indolent; that if the digging after a chipmunk was hard he left the job unfinished and sought easier sources of food. Thus the black bear that frequented the "bad lands" loafed across his range, living by the easiest means possible and rarely exerting himself. Twice when Blackie's trail crossed that of other black bears, the tracks showed that all stopped to play, romping much as children romp and showing a sociable disposition. It was usually late in November before the black bear denned up for the winter, commonly adapting the shelter beneath some windfall to make a winter home by enlarging and improving it and perhaps by raking in some dead pine needles.

At the approach of fall Blackie left off distant wanderings, conserved energy by little exertion, and thus waxed fat. In the thickest of the rough jumble I found two of his deserted winter dens to which he never returned, and once in midwinter I found him out, asleep beneath some brush over which the snow had drifted. It was the thread of rising steam from a tiny hole above the den that first attracted my attention to it, but my nose gave me additional information.

Blackie's tracks showed he had unusually large feet for his pounds, so I called him "Bigfoot." There was a marked difference between Blackie's and the other tracks I found in the "bad-lands." The other tracks were those of a grizzly, a fact I determined after collecting evidence for several years, and by sight of the animals themselves. There was a wide difference, too, in the actions of these animals whenever anything unusual happened. Blackie, commonly, ran away without waiting to learn what had caused the alarm. The grizzly displayed extreme caution, usually standing erect on his hind feet, remaining motionless, watching for silent signals of other animals and the birds, swinging his head slowly from side to side, training his high-power nose in all directions, cocking his ears alertly as a coyote. When he located the enemy he slipped away noiselessly, followed a trail with which he was familiar and left the vicinity, perhaps traveling ten or twenty miles before stopping.

Unlike Blackie, too, the grizzly was a prodigious worker. No job was too big for him. Often he spent an hour or more in digging out a tiny titbit such as a chipmunk, and several times in his pursuit of a marmot he excavated in rockslides holes large enough for small basements. Daily he traveled many miles, foraging for food as he moved, sometimes eating swarms of grasshoppers, or stowing away bushels of grass or other greenery, or uprooting the ground for dogtooth violets of which he was very fond. Such spots, when he had finished his rooting, resembled a field which the hogs had plowed up.

In one respect the black bear and the grizzly were alike: they never seemed to have enough to eat, but had the insatiable appetites of growing boys; never showing any signs of being finicky, but devouring everything edible. Ants, hoppers, chipmunks, marmots and rabbits, comprised their fresh meat; while roots, shoots, bulbs, grass, berries and practically everything growing served for vegetables. They both were inordinately fond of honey. Early one fall the grizzly left his home range and headed for the foothills. More than twenty miles away he found a bee tree, an old hollow cedar which he tore open. He devoured both bees and honey, then went lumbering home. Mountain lions made frequent kills about the region, leaving the carcasses of deer, cattle, horses and burros, which the bears located with their noses or by the flight of birds, and gorged themselves; afterward lying down in some retreat and sleeping long, peaceful hours.

It was because of their scavenger habits that they came to be blamed for killing the animals upon which they fed. But not once did I find evidence that they had killed anything larger than a marmot. The grizzly was always working industriously, from dawn to dark, or at night; while Blackie dallied, even though making a "bear living." He preferred to go empty rather than to work for food.

Three winters in succession the grizzly climbed to a den in an exposed spot on the northern slope of Mount Meeker. It was a low opening beneath a rock, the entrance to which was partially stopped with loose rubble, raked from inside the cave, and every fall he renovated it by chinking the larger cracks and by pawing together loose bits of rock for a bed. As fall approached, his tracks led to it; apparently he napped inside occasionally to try it out. His ultimate retirement for winter hibernation depended upon the weather and the food supply; if the fall were late, with plenty of food, he would still be about the woods as late as December, while one fall when snow came early and deep, and so made food unavailable, he disappeared at the end of October.

The grizzly had many individual traits. Not once in the years I followed him, did he show any desire for others of his kind. He preferred being alone. His play consisted chiefly of elaborate stalkings of easily captured animals. If his hunger was appeased for a time he would turn to hunting grasshoppers. Marking the spot where one had alighted he would steal forward and pounce upon it as though it were an animal of size and fighting ability. Again he would take great pains to waylay a chipmunk, lying motionless while the unwary little spermophile ventured closer and closer, then, with a lightning-like slap of a huge paw, he would reduce his victim to the general shape and thinness of a pancake.

Though the grizzly was somewhat awkward in appearance he could move with amazing speed, and his strength was incredible. From glimpses I had of him I estimated his weight at six hundred pounds, but he could move the carcass of a cow or horse twice that heavy. Once on Cabin Creek, not many miles from his accustomed haunts, a lion killed a horse. As he approached the kill, the grizzly circled warily around it, stood erect to sniff and listen, and growled warningly, informing all would-be intruders that it was his. When he had eaten his fill, he dragged the carcass nearly a hundred yards uphill over fallen timber, into a thicket, where he covered it against the prying eyes of birds, thinking, I presume, that they would signal other animals of its location.

The date of his emergence from his den in the spring, like his holing up in the fall, depended upon the weather. Commonly though, he hibernated about one-third of the year. When he came out after his long sleep he was very thin, the great layers of fat he had taken care to put on before denning up were gone. One year I followed his tracks the day he came out to learn what he first ate, and was surprised to find that he scarcely ate at all. Instead of being ravenous, as I had supposed he would be, he seemed to have no appetite, and barely tasted a green shoot or two, and a little grass. His claws had grown out over winter and the tough soles of his feet soon shed off so that, though born to the wilds, he became a tenderfoot.

Upon two occasions I found the tracks of this "bad lands" grizzly far from home; once he was at the edge of a snowbank near Arapahoe glacier, where he had gone for a frozen grasshopper feast; and another time, some years later, beyond Ypsilon Mountain, in an old sheep trail that led toward the headwaters of the Poudre River. He was more than thirty miles from home and still going.

Experience with men has made the few surviving grizzlies of the Rockies crafty, and they are instinctively wary. Their habits have been much the same wherever I have had opportunity of observing them. Their extreme caution would perhaps lead one to believe them cowards, but nothing is farther from the truth, for they are fighters of first rank, and show unrivaled courage as well as lightning-like speed and prodigious strength in combat. A fighting grizzly is a deadly antagonist, never giving up, determined to win or die.

When a grizzly turns killer, as occasionally one of them does, you may depend upon it, there are extenuating circumstances, and any fair-minded jury would exonerate him of blame. When his home range becomes settled up and the sources of his natural food are destroyed, he is forced to seek new haunts and to eat such food as his new location affords. It is not strange that, constricted in his range by ranchers and cattlemen, with no opportunity to seek food according to his instinctive habits, he sometimes turns cattle killer.

His action brands him at once as a bad bear, a killer and his infamy quickly spreads the length of the mountains. He is blamed for the kills of mountain lions, and the death of stock killed by chance. He is hunted, becomes a fugitive from justice, and is kept so continuously on the move that he has to prey on cattle because he is not given time to forage in his former manner. Persecution sharpens his faculties; he eludes his pursuers and their dogs, poisoned bait and traps, with a shrewdness that puts their so-called intelligence to shame.

It was my rare privilege one day to witness the chase of an accused "killer" by a dog pack. I was near timberline in the Rabbit Ear mountains when first I heard their distant baying and caught sight of them far down a narrow valley, mere moving specks. Close behind these small dots were larger ones, men on horseback. A mile ahead of the pack a lone object galloped into an opening and, as I focused my glasses, stood erect, listening. It was a grizzly. He paused but a moment, then tacked up the side of the mountain, crossed the ridge, dropped into a parallel valley, and doubled back the way he had come. Occasionally I caught a glimpse of him as he ambled along, seemingly without haste, yet covering the ground at surprising speed.

Abruptly he left this second valley and recrossed the ridge to the first, taking up the trail he had been on when the pack disturbed him. The riders were still upon the ridge when the dogs recrossed it and started baying up the first valley. When the fresh scent led them back over the grizzly's first trail, they hesitated, confused, disagreeing among themselves as to the course to follow: and while the dogs delayed, the bear abandoned the lower ridges and timbered valleys and headed toward the cliffs. Here the going was slow. Sometimes he followed old, deep-worn game trails, but more often he chose his own way. He climbed up the face of a cliff, following narrow ledges. At the top, he turned and angled back, arriving at the base of the wall again, but some distance from the place where he had climbed up, and where he crossed his own trail, he swung back and forth repeatedly.

Half an hour later, the pack came howling to the cliff, and began seeking a way up. They scattered, swung back and forth along the ledges, crossed and recrossed the grizzly's tracks, but seemed unable to follow the way he had gone, before they finally circled the cliff and picked up his trail again. The bear's ruse had succeeded, by it he gained several minutes' lead on his pursuers.

The grizzly emerged above timberline near where I sat and galloped straight for a pass that overlooked the deep canyons, dark forests and rocky ridges on the other side of the range. Just before he gained it, three of the dogs broke cover and gave tongue, wildly excited at the sight of their quarry, and instantly hot on his trail. The bear coolly kept his same gait, until just short of the pass, at the top of a steep, smooth incline between two huge rock slabs, he halted and faced about, waiting for them to come up. When the dogs, panting and spent from running, dashed up, he had got his wind and was ready for them.

The three dogs rushed pell-mell up the steep rock. With a deafening roar, the grizzly struck out right and left. Two of the dogs ceased howling and lay where they fell, the third turned tail and fled. The bear, stepping over the dead bodies of his vanquished foes, leisurely proceeded through the pass and down into the wild country beyond.

I have watched other grizzlies under similar conditions, and they have all shown the same shrewd, cool, craftiness. They appear to reason, to plan; their actions indicate forethought, premeditation. They seem to have not only the marvelous instinct of the animal world, but also an almost human power to think. They conserve their energy, bide their time, choose their position and, in short, set the stage to their own advantage. They have an instinct for the psychological moment—it seems at times that they evolve it out of the chaos of chance.

The Parson said, "You never can tell what a bear will do," and I, for one, believe him. The oddest performance of an individual bear I ever saw took place over on the banks of the Poudre River. Rambling through the forest I came, late one evening, upon the camp of two trappers. They were making a business of trapping and had extensive trap-lines set throughout the region, mostly for beavers, minks, bobcats and coyotes, but some for bears too. In a narrow, dry gulch, one of them had found fresh bear tracks—he thought of a medium-sized black bear—leading up to the scattered, bleached bones of a cow. Tracks about the skull indicated that the bear had rolled it about, much as a puppy worries a bone. One day the trapper found the skull hidden in some juniper bushes, and reasoned that the bear returned from day to day, played with it, then hid it away. So he returned to camp, got a trap and set it by the beast's toy.

I was eager to learn the outcome of this action, so I gratefully accepted the trappers' invitation to stay over with them. Next day, I went along when they visited the trap. To our astonishment, the skull was gone and the trap still set.

It was easy to trace the culprit for his tracks revealed that his left front foot was badly twisted, its track pointing in, almost at right angles, to the tracks of the other three feet, with the clawmarks almost touching the track of the right front foot. We followed his trail till we came to a sandy stretch upon which that bear had held high carnival. He had rolled the skull about, punted it with his good right paw, and leaped upon it, in mimic attack, as though it were a fat marmot. Then, playtime over, he had carried it a considerable distance and cached it beneath some logs.

The trapper returned to camp for another trap, and set it and the first near the skull, concealing the traps cleverly in depressions scooped out in the sand, and covering their gaping, toothed jaws with loose, pine needles. Then he scattered a few pine cones about, and placed dead tree limbs near the traps in such a way that in stepping over them the bear would be liable to step squarely upon the concealed pan of one of them.

Three times the bear rescued the precious cow skull, each time avoiding the traps. At last in desperation, the trapper took two more traps to the gulch and vowed that he'd pull up stakes and leave the bear alone if he did not get him with the set he purposed making.

With boyish interest, I accompanied him to the gulch, carrying one of the traps for him. We left the traps a short distance from where the bear had concealed the old skull, while the trapper looked the ground over and decided to set the traps where the skull was hidden, for the spot was ideal for the purpose. On two sides logs formed a barrier and beyond them was a huge bowlder, the two forming a natural little cove. He expected the bear to approach his plaything from the unobstructed side.

The trapper had further plans. Close beside the logs grew a stunted pine tree with wide-spreading limbs near the ground. In its crotch he placed the cow's skull, higher than the bear could reach, and fastened it there with wire. Then, after setting the traps in a semi-circle around the tree, just below the skull, and concealing them carefully, we returned to camp, jubilantly confident of catching Mr. Bruin.

Three times we visited the set and found things undisturbed. We decided the bear had forsworn his toy and run away. However, I lingered at the camp in hope that the matter would yet come to a decisive end.

Some days later, when we visited the gulch again, we came upon a surprise. From a distance we missed the skull from the tree. So we hastened forward, keeping a sharp eye out for the bear which we felt certain was in a trap and lying low. At the set we stopped short. The two traps nearest the open space had been carefully dug up and turned over, and lay "butter side down." The bear had climbed into the tree, wrenched his plaything free, and dropped it to the ground. Tracks in the sand showed that after climbing down he had cautiously placed his feet in the same tracks he had made when he advanced toward the tree.

He had carried the skull a hundred yards from the traps and hidden it again; but there were no signs that he had stopped to play with it.

The trapper was as good as his word; and after recovering from his astonishment, he sprung the traps, and we carried them back to camp.

"Some smart, that ole twisted-foot bear," the trapper told his partner. "He's smart enough to live a hundred years—an' I'm willin' to let him."

No campfire is complete without bear stories, and it was around one that I heard the funniest bear story imaginable.

A lone trapper was caught one day in a trap of his own making, a ponderous wooden coop calculated to catch the bear alive by dropping a heavy log door in place at the open end. This door was on a trigger which a bear, in attempting to steal the bait, would spring.

As this tale was told, the trapper had just completed his trap and was adjusting the trigger, when the heavy door crashed down, pinning him across the threshold, with his legs outside. The door caught on a section of log in the doorway, and saved him from broken legs, but he was a helpless prisoner.

In struggling to free himself, he kicked over a can of honey he had brought along for bait, and the sticky fluid oozed over his thrashing legs. Four hours he lay, imprisoned, shouting at intervals, with the hope that some wandering prospector or trapper might hear him. Instead a bear came his way, tempted by the scent of the much-loved honey.

The bear loitered near by some time, no doubt wary of the presence of man, but at last his appetite overcame his caution, and he started licking up the honey. Almost frantic with fear, dreading the gash of tearing teeth, the man lay quiet, while the animal licked the smears off his trembling legs. Fortunately for the trapper, the bear was not out for meat that day; so, after cleaning up the sweet, he went his way. The relieved and unharmed man was rescued shortly afterward.

The only serious injury I have suffered from a wild animal was inflicted inside the city limits of Denver, Colorado's largest city and capital. The beginning of this story dated back to the time when I discovered that another grizzly had intruded into the "bad lands" of my bears. The first announcement of the strange bear's arrival was its tracks, together with those of two tiny cubs. This was in May, while yet the snowbanks lingered in that high country.

Across the miles of fallen timber I lugged a steel bear trap and set it in a likely spot beside the frozen carcass of a deer. Afterwards I inspected it every day, though, to do so, I had to cross boggy, rough country, fretted over with fallen logs. I always found plenty of bear tracks—it was typical bear country—and there were many signs of their activities: old logs torn apart, ant hills disturbed, and lush grass trampled.

The first week in June, I made a surprising catch—three grizzly bears and a fox. A mother grizzly had stepped into my trap, and her two cubs, of about fifteen pounds each, had lingered near by, until, growing hungry, they had ventured to their mother, and one had been caught in a coyote trap set to protect the bait. The fox had been caught before the bear's arrival. Mrs. Grizzly, frantic over her predicament, had demolished everything within her reach, tearing the red fox from its trap, literally shredding it, apparently feeling it was to blame for her misfortune.

Her struggles soon exhausted her, for it was a warm day, and when I discovered her she was about spent, and easily dispatched.

The cubs, very small, helpless and forlorn, howled lustily for their mother. I decided to tie their feet together, and their mouths shut.

With ready cord, I dived headlong upon a cub, caught him by the scruff of the neck, lifted him triumphantly—then dropped him unceremoniously, the end of a finger badly bitten. I was compelled to return to my cabin for a sack, because the amount of tying required to render the cubs really harmless seemed likely to choke them to death before I got them home. It required about an hour's lively tussle to get the two young grizzlies stowed safely in the sack. But I learned that having them sacked was no guarantee of getting them home.

If "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush," a bear at home, chained up, is worth the whole Rockies' full in the woods.

The old grizzly's hide, paws included, must have weighed fifty pounds; the cubs, sacked, thirty—a total load of 80 pounds to carry out over rocks and fallen trees, through bog and willows. With this load on my back, I struggled to my feet and started, picking my way slowly, circling logs and avoiding soft spots. The first half mile was the best, after that things thickened up, the bog deepened, the bears wanted to get out and walk.

Where the stream emerges from between a wide moraine and Meeker Mountain, it is not broad, nor very deep, but it is exceedingly cold and swift, and the only crossing was a beaver-felled aspen, which lay top-foremost toward me, presenting an array of limbs that served as banisters. About midway over the limbs gave out, leaving the smooth aspen trunk as a foot-log. Many times I had crossed this without mishap, so I had no qualms about tackling it now. Deliberately I edged along, stepping slowly, carefully, progressing nicely until about midway. Just then one of the cubs sank his teeth into my back. I jerked away, twisted, tottered, half regained my balance, then pitched headlong into the icy water of the beaver pond beneath.

For a moment there was a grand melee. The cubs did not like the ice water any more than I. They squirmed and clawed, fought free of the sack, and lightened my load considerably. I spent a busy hour catching and sacking them again.

It required six hours to transport those cubs four miles! And I'm sure they were as thankful as their ferry when the trip ended at my cabin.

From the first week in June until the middle of December, they grew from fifteen pounds to forty each. Although they were interesting pets, their keep became a problem. Such appetites! They could never get enough. They weren't finicky about the quality of their food; but oh, the quantity! Then, too, I couldn't leave them and go on long trips. So I decided to part with them.

The City of Denver sent a representative to see me, for they wanted some grizzlies to show eastern tourists.

It was with the feeling that I was betraying the cubs, however, that I finally took them to Denver. They were so obedient and well-behaved that I hesitated to deliver them into unknown hands. They knew their names, Johnny and Jenny, as well as children knew theirs. At command they would stand erect, walk about on their hind feet, whining eagerly for some treat, looking for all the world like funny, little old men.

At the Denver City Zoo we were welcomed by the keeper, Mr. Hill, who courteously invited me to spend the day with him, and entertained me by taking me into many of the cages, permitting me to feed some of the animals, and telling me interesting tales of happenings at the Zoo.

When we returned to the large inclosure surrounding the cage of the larger and fiercer animals, Mr. Hill asked me to assist in transfering a brown bear and a black bear to the cage where my pets were to be housed. These other bears were over a year old and more than double the size of Johnny and Jenny. The brown bear went willingly enough into the new cage, and we expected the black bear to follow, but when he reached the cage door, he stopped. Gently we urged him forward, but his mind was made up—he had gone as far as he intended and was homesick for his old cage. The keeper was tactful, and unobtrusively tried to maneuver the bear into the cage without exciting his obstinacy further, but he wouldn't yield. At last it came to a show down. We had the option of forcing the bear into the cage, or letting him go back.

"You go inside and snub the rope around the bars," the keeper directed me. "I'll boost from behind—we'll show him a trick or two."

A crowd had collected outside the heavy iron fence. Suggestions were abundant. No young man ever had so much advice in so short a time. However, we were too busily engaged to profit by what we were told.

The keeper boosted the bear—and I took up the slack in the rope; but still the bear balked, though three times we double-teamed against him. Then, suddenly, he let go all holds and lunged through the doorway, charging headlong upon me and sank his teeth into my left knee. The bite and the force of his unexpected charge knocked me backward into the corner. Instantly the bear was on top of me, growling, biting and striking.

With my uninjured leg I kicked out savagely and thrust him away, sliding him back across the slippery concrete. Again he charged, and once more I kicked him off.

Outside the iron fence women were screaming and men trying futilely to enter, but the fence was ten feet high and the sharp iron points of its pickets were discouraging—and the gateway was locked against intruders.

At this juncture the keeper rushed to another cage where he kept an iron bar for just such emergencies, but the bar was away from home that day.

At this crisis, Johnny and Jenny arrived, Jenny collided with the bars of the cage and staggered back, dazed. But Johnny found the open cage door, and charged the black bear ferociously. The black bear outweighed my little grizzly three to one, but Johnny struck his sensitive snout, forcing him into a corner, and followed up, striking with both paws, lunging in and taking furry samples of his hide.

Within a few seconds the black bear was climbing the side of the cage and howling for help. He gained the shelf near the roof. Johnny, unable to climb, sat below, growling maledictions in bear language, daring him to come down and fight it out. But the black bear had had more than enough. He stuck to the safety seat, whimpering with pain and fright.

Thus, limping and reluctant, I took leave of my pets. The ambulance had arrived to rush me to the hospital where my knee was to be treated. As long as I could see them, they looked after me, wondering at my desertion.



CHAPTER FIFTEEN

ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK

It had been my boyhood dream to find a region unspoiled by man, wild, primitive.

When I saw that rugged wilderness called the Rockies I was sure I had found it. Miles and miles of virgin forest, innocent of ax and saw; miles and miles of fertile valleys, yet to feel the touch of plow; miles and miles of unclaimed homesteads with never the smoke of a settler's chimney! Deer and elk, sheep and bear roamed the forests, beavers preempted the valleys, trout spashed and rippled the waters of the lakes and rivers. Yes, this was purely primeval, natural, uncivilized.

But the old-timers did not agree with me. Parson Lamb, whose nearest neighbor was ten miles away, complained that the country was being spoiled.

"It's gotten so nowadays you can't see a mountain 'thout craning your neck around some fellow's shack; cabins everywhere cluttering up the scenery."

I recalled my father's chuckling about the pioneers always moving on as soon as a country got settled up. Surely the Parson was having his little joke!

One day when I was out looking for Mr. and Mrs. Peg, I ran upon an old trapper.

"Huh!" he said, "won't be long till they won't be no critters atall. They ain't enough now to pay for trap-bait. Game ain't what it useter be in these parts, I tell you, sonny. I'm goin' ter pull up stakes for a real game country!"

To me, lately from the thickly settled prairies of Kansas, practically destitute of game, their fears seemed unfounded. I thought they exaggerated, and could not understand their point of view. But I came to understand. I lived to see even greater changes take place, in the twenty-five years I wandered through the country, that Parson Lamb had witnessed from the day he hewed his way through the forest, that he might get his covered wagon into the valley, to that night when I fell across his threshold after pushing my bicycle over Bald Mountain.

For even as I rambled and camped, a subtle change was taking place so slowly that for some time I was unaware of it. I saw fewer animals in a day's journey. At first, when I missed bands of deer or wild sheep, or some familiar bear, from their usual haunts, I assumed that they had shifted their range to more distant mountains. All at once I realized that for a long time I had not come upon a single elk nor even the tracks of one. I was startled. I made far excursions into the more remote regions, to verify my assumption that the game had merely retreated from the more settled parts. From the tops of lofty peaks, I looked down upon countless valleys with the hope that somewhere, surely, I would find them. I saw only a few stragglers.

The wilds were like an empty house where once had lived happy children, where there had been music and laughter, shouts and romping, but now remained only silence, freighted with sadness. A great loneliness surged over me. Despite the grumbling complaints of the old settlers, I had taken for granted that the country would always stay as I had found it, that other boys would have it to explore, and that it would thrill them even as it had thrilled me. I awoke at last to the distressing truth that few of the easily accessible spots were unspoiled, that forests were falling, that the game was almost gone.

I set out to see what could be done about it. I found others as concerned as I. Not only those in the immediate vicinity, but men of vision far removed from the scene. It seemed that similar conditions had arisen elsewhere and that far-sighted men had evolved a remedy. Back in 1872, Congress had set aside the Yellowstone region as a national park, guaranteeing the preservation of its wonders for all time. Not only that, but the harassed and hunted game in the country surrounding it had by some subtle instinct sensed its immunity to hunters, and had fled to it for sanctuary—grizzly bears migrated to it from long distances and found refuge. I recalled how scarce the beavers were when first I searched the valleys for them, and how, after the State had passed laws for their protection, they had multiplied. Here was the solution of the problem—protection; and the most permanent and effective protection could be procured by getting the government to preserve it as a National Park. But, just as nearsighted and self-interested individuals opposed and tried to thwart the building of the first transcontinental railroad, so there were persons who could see no reason for setting aside this region as a National Park, men who had for years cut government timber without restriction, or who had grazed livestock without hindrance, or who still hoped to strike rich mineral deposits in the proposed area to be reserved.

Fortunately, the men of vision prevailed, and in 1915, Congress created the Rocky Mountain National Park, setting aside 400 square miles of territory, most of it straddling the Continental Divide, and as wild and primitive as when the Utes first hunted in it. Thus the snow-capped peaks and the verdant valleys, the deep-gashed canyons and the rushing rivers, the age-old glaciers and the primeval forests are preserved forever from exploitation.

In administering the National Parks, the government takes into consideration that they are the property of the whole people, not just of those residing in adjacent or near territory. Not only does it consider them as belonging to the present generation, but to posterity. With this in mind, it has formulated certain general principles of administration applicable to all parks and has adopted special policies adapted to the peculiar needs of individual parks. For instance, it has found that in order to protect the visitors and insure their comfort, and convenience, it is necessary to have certain regulations of hotel management and transportation facilities. It has found it impossible to hold many individual concerns responsible for the enforcement of these regulations, so it has adopted the policy of granting concessions to one large company equipped to render the service required. Such a concern conducts its business under government jurisdiction, and is required to abide by the government regulations. The transportation companies, for example, are required to run their cars on regular schedule, at reasonable and approved rates. Their books are audited by the government, and they pay a certain percentage of their earnings to it.

As funds are available roads and trails are developed, enabling thousands to enjoy the last frontier. And it is amazing, how, in this short time, wild life has increased within the borders of the park. Beavers have returned, their dams and houses are along every stream; deer and elk straggle along the trails to welcome wide-eyed visitors; upon the promontories curious, friendly mountain sheep are regal silhouettes against the sky.

Here boys and girls of every land may explore even as I explored—and, with their trusty cameras for guns, shoot more game than Kit Carson ever trapped!



THE END