True Bear Stories Part 12

Chopping off their tails and pouring sweet oil down their throats did not restore them.

No chance to la.s.so a bear presented itself, and as soon as the trap was completed and baited with two live pigs the party returned to Pine Mountain.

At last it became evident that the bears on Mount Pinos could not be enticed into a trap while they had their pick and choice of the thousands of sheep that grazed on the mountain. They preferred to do their own butchering and would not touch mutton that was killed for them by anybody else. A cougar raided a camp one night, sprang upon the sheep from a willow thicket and killed three within twenty yards of the sleeping herder. The fastidious cougar cut their throats, sucked their blood and left their carca.s.ses at the edge of the thicket without eating the meat. But the bears would not touch what the cougar left.

Shortly after this the herders reported that the bears were avoiding the sheep and pa.s.sing around the bands without making an attack.

Apparently bruin had made a miscalculation in his calendar and was keeping Lent in the wrong season, but his erratic conduct was explained when some of the herders admitted that they had put strychnine into several carca.s.ses. Some of the bears had got doses of poison large enough to make them mortally unwell, but had survived and sworn off eating mutton. They disappeared from the vicinity of the camps and grazing ground, and went into solitary confinement in remote and deep gorges, where n.o.body but a lunatic would follow them.

The result of many weeks' hard work on Mount Pinos was the acquirement of some knowledge of the nature and eccentricities of Ursus ferox, which was glibly imparted by Tom, d.i.c.k and Harry, who a.s.sumed that the mere fact of their having lived near the mountains qualified them to speak as authorities on the habits of bears.

One inspired idiot declared that the best way to catch a grizzly was to give him atropia, which would make him blind for a day or two, and lead him along like a tame calf. This genius was so enamored of his great discovery that he went about the country telling everybody that the Examiner man was going to catch a grizzly with atropia, and that he (the aforesaid lunatic) was the inventor of the scheme and general boss of the outfit.

"A bear will do this," said one. "He will do so and so," said another, and "you just do that and he'll go right into the trap," said a dozen more. Everybody seemed to be loaded to the guards with an a.s.sorted cargo of general ignorance about bears, which they were anxious to discharge upon the Examiner expedition, but not one man in the whole lot ever caught a grizzly, and very few ever saw one.

As a matter of fact, determined by experience and observation, a grizzly will do none of the things laid down as rules of conduct for him by the wise men of the mountains, but will do pretty much as he pleases, and act as his individual whim or desire moves him. It is a mistake to generalize about bears from the actions of one of the species. One bear will be bold and inquisitive, and will walk right into a camp to gratify his curiosity, while another will carefully avoid man and all his works.

The predictions of an ursine invasion of Mount Pinos were not fulfilled and when it became clear that the few grizzlies in the neighborhood were too timid and wary to be caught, the expedition struck camp and moved on, leaving the traps set for luck.

Considerable annoyance was caused by a discharged mule-packer, who carried away tools required in trap building, and embezzled quite a sum of money. The fellow had attempted to impose upon the correspondent by whittling out pine-bark models of bear's feet, with which to make tracks around the trap; and had proposed various swindling jobs to others of the party, explaining that the "Examiner was rich and they might as well get a hack at the money." He had opened and read letters intrusted to him for mailing, and had proved himself generally a faithless scamp and an unconscionable liar. A written demand upon him, for rest.i.tution of his plunder, elicited only a coa.r.s.e and abusive letter, but there was no time to waste in prosecuting the fellow and he was left in the enjoyment of his booty and in such satisfaction as the rascal mind of him could derive from the fact that he had succeeded in robbing his employer.

The big bear on the Mutaw never came near the trap built for his special accommodation, notwithstanding the confident a.s.surances of the bear experts on the ranch that he was sure to show up within forty-eight hours. For two months after the poisoning of his campanero no signs of the large grizzly were seen anywhere near the Mutaw, and the hogs roamed about the hills unmolested.

After leaving Mount Pinos the expedition built several traps in the mountains near trails frequented by bears. An old grizzly that lived among the unsurveyed and unnamed peaks between Castac Lake and the Liebra Mountain absorbed the attention of the hunters for some time.

He was an audacious marauder and killed his beef almost within sight of the camp-fire. Often at night a cow or steer could be heard bellowing in terror, and in the morning a freshly killed animal would be found in some hollow not far away, bearing marks of bear's claws.

Whitened bones scattered all over the hills showed that the bear had been the boss butcher of General Beal's ranch for a long time. His average allowance of beef appeared to be about two steers a week, but he usually ate only half a carca.s.s, leaving the rest to the coyotes and vultures.

One morning Bowers returned from a hunt for the horses, two of which had been struck and slightly wounded by the bear a few nights before, and had run away, and reported the discovery of a dead steer within 150 yards of an unfinished trap, about a quarter of a mile from camp.

The animal appeared to have been killed two nights before, and the bear had made but one meal off the carca.s.s. As he might be expected to return that night, all haste was made to finish the trap. Bowers rode out to Gorman's Station to get some nails and honey, while the correspondent paid a visit to one of General Beal's old corrals and stole some planks to make a door. He packed the planks up the mountain, and was using the hammer and saw with great diligence and a tremendous amount of noise, when bruin sauntered down the ridge, looked curiously at him and calmly began eating an early supper, wholly indifferent to the noise of the hammer and the presence of the man.

It was nearly dark when Bowers rode up to the trap, his horse in a lather composed of equal parts of perspiration and honey, the latter having leaked profusely from the cans tied to the saddle. Tossing the nails to the correspondent, Bowers hastily dismounted and went afoot up the ridge toward the dead steer, intending to place a can of honey near it. In about a minute Bowers was seen running from the ridge in fifteen-foot jumps, and as he approached the trap he shouted: "The bear is there now!"

"Is that so?" said the correspondent. "I thought he had finished his supper and had gone away by this time."

Bowers had approached to within forty yards of the bear before seeing him, and the bear had merely raised his head, taken a look at the intruder and resumed his eating. As it had become too dark to drive nails, and there was no longer any reason for finis.h.i.+ng the door that night, Bowers fetched the rifles from camp and the two men went up the ridge to take a better look at the bear. Had there been light enough to make the rifle sights visible, it would have been hard to resist the temptation of turning loose at the old fellow from behind a convenient log; but it was impossible to draw a bead on him, and it would have been sheer foolhardiness to shoot and take the chances of a fight in the dark with a wounded grizzly. Besides, if shot at and missed, the bear would probably not return, and all the chances of getting him into the trap would be lost. So the two sat on a log and watched the grizzly till the night came on thick and dark, when they returned to camp.

The trap was finished the next day, but a somewhat ludicrous accident destroyed its possibilities of usefulness, and made it quite certain that bruin would never be caught in it. Not expecting a visit from the bear, for at least two days, the correspondent went up to the ridge just before dark, made a rope fast to the remains of a steer, and dragged him down to the trap. Bowers had gone back to Ventura on business, and the correspondent was alone on the mountain; when he went into the trap to fix a can of honey upon the trigger, he placed a stick under the door, in such a way that if the door should fall he could use the stick as a lever to pry it up, and so avoid an experience like Dad Coffman's.

The precaution was well taken. While he was arranging the bait he heard snuffling and the movement of some animal outside. Supposing that some cow or perhaps the burro was wandering about, he paid no particular attention to the noise, but when the bait was arranged and he turned to go out he saw the muzzle of old bruin poked into the door and his eyes blinking curiously at the dark interior of the trap.

Bruin had come down for a feast and had followed the trail of the steer's remains with unexpected promptness. He had scented the honey, which was more alluring than stale beef, and evidently was considering the propriety of entering the trap to get his supper, which might consist of honeycomb _au naturel_, with Examiner man on the side.

The man in the trap deemed it highly improper for the bear to intrude at that time, and quickly decided the etiquette of the case by kicking the trigger and letting the door fall with a dull thud plump upon the old grizzly's nose. A hundred and sixty pounds falling four feet is no laughing affair when it hits one on the nose, and bruin did not make light of it. He was pained and surprised, and he went away more in sorrow than in anger, judging from the tone of his expostulating grunts and snorts.

When the snorts of the bear died away in the distance, the correspondent pried up the door, crawled out and cautiously made his way through the dark woods to his lonely camp.

At this time there were six traps scattered through the mountains within a radius of sixty miles, all of them set and baited, and the more distant ones watched by men employed for that purpose. One of the traps was on a mountain that was not pastured by cattle, or sheep, and as there were no acorns in that part of the country, the bears had to rustle for a living and were unable to withstand the temptation offered by quarters of beef judiciously exposed to their raids.

The bait scattered around this trap was discovered by four bears, but for some time they regarded it with suspicion, and were afraid to touch it, possibly because they detected the scent of man near it.

Gradually they became accustomed to it and the signs of man's presence, and then they began to quarrel over the meat, as was plainly indicated by the disturbance of the ground where their tracks met. Two of the tracks were of medium size, one was quite large and evidently made by a grizzly, and the fourth was enormous, being fourteen inches long and nine inches wide.

The last-named track was not made by a grizzly however. There were six toes on the forefoot, and this peculiar deformity was the distinguis.h.i.+ng mark of a gigantic cinnamon bear known to hunters as "Six-Toed Pete."

It was almost invariably found, during the long campaign in the wilderness, that tracks over eleven inches in length were made by cinnamon bears, and not by genuine grizzlies, although some hunters declare that the cinnamon is only a variety of grizzly, and that the color is not the mark of a different species. However that may be, the difference between the two varieties is very distinct, and as the object of the expedition was the capture of an indubitable California grizzly, no special effort was made to trap any of the big cinnamons.

The smaller bears soon gave up the contest for the beef and left the field to Pete and the grizzly, who quarreled and fought around it for several nights. At last the grizzly gave Pete a thorough licking and established his own right to the t.i.tle of monarch of the mountain. The decisive battle occurred one moonlight night and was witnessed from a safe perch in a fork of a tree near the trap.

It was nearly 9 o'clock when the snapping of dry sticks indicated the approach of a heavy animal through the brush, and in a few moments the big grizzly came into sight, walking slowly and sniffing suspiciously.

A smart breeze was drawing down the canyon, and the bear, being to the windward, could not smell the man up the tree, but he approached the meat cautiously and seemed in no hurry for his supper. While he was reconnoitering another animal was heard smas.h.i.+ng through the thicket, and presently the huge bulk of Six-Toed Pete loomed up in the moonlight at the edge of the opening.

At the approach of the cinnamon the grizzly rose upon his haunches and uttered low, hoa.r.s.e growls, and when the big fellow appeared within twenty feet of him, he launched himself forward with surprising swiftness and struck Pete a blow on the neck that staggered him. It was like one of Sullivan's rushes in the ring, and the blow of that ponderous paw would have knocked out an ox; but Pete was no slouch of a slugger himself, and he quickly recovered and returned the blow with such good will that had the grizzly's head been in the way it would have ached for a week afterward.

Then the fur began to fly.

It was impossible to follow the movements of the combatants in detail, as they sparred, clinched and rolled about, but in a general way Six-Toed Pete seemed to be trying to make his superior weight tell by rus.h.i.+ng at the grizzly and knocking him over, while the latter avoided the direct impact of the cinnamon's great bulk by quick turns and a display of agility that was scarcely credible in so unwieldy looking an animal. Once the cinnamon seized the grizzly by the throat and for a moment hushed the latter's fierce growls by choking off his wind, but the grizzly sat down, threw his arm over Pete's neck, placed his other forepaw upon Pete's nose, sunk his claws in deep, and instantly broke the hold. As they parted, the grizzly made a vicious sweep with his right paw and caught Pete on the side of the head. The blow either destroyed the cinnamon's left eye or tore the flesh around it, so that the blood blinded him on that side, for during the rest of the fight he tried to keep his right side toward the grizzly and seemed unable to avoid blows delivered on his left.

For at least a quarter of an hour the combat raged, without an instant's cessation, both belligerents keeping up a terrific growling, punctuated with occasional howls of pain. Neither could get a fair blow at the other's head. Had the grizzly struck the cinnamon with the full force of his tremendous arm, Pete's skull would have surely been smashed. Pete finally got enough, broke away from the Monarch and fled into the brush, a badly used up bear; and he never came back.

Having won his supper by force of arms, the grizzly was no longer suspicious of the bait, and he ate up the best part of a quarter of beef before he left the battle ground. He soon became accustomed to the trap, and regularly came there for his meals, which were gradually placed nearer the door and finally inside the structure. A piece of meat was tied to the trigger, and one morning the door was found closed, and a great ripping and tearing was heard going on inside. The Monarch was caught at last.

Upon the approach of the men, the grizzly became furious and made the heavy logs tremble and shake in his efforts to get out and resent the indignity that had been placed upon him. Had he concentrated his attack on any one spot and been left to wreak his rage without interruption he would have been out in a few hours, but he was not permitted to work long at any place. Wherever he began work he encountered the end of a heavy stake which was jabbed against his nose and head with all the power of a man's arms.

Day and night from the moment he was found in the trap, the Monarch was watched and guarded, and he kept two men busy all the time.

Although his attention was distracted from the trap as much as possible, he found time to gnaw and rip a ten-inch log almost in two, and sometimes he made the bark and splinters fly in a way that was calculated to make a nervous man loathe the job of standing guard over him. For six days the Monarch was so busy trying to break jail that he had no time to fool away in eating. Solitary confinement developed in him a most malicious temper and he flew into a rage whenever food was thrown to him.

But his applications for a writ of habeas corpus were persistently denied by a man with a club, and the Monarch at last cooled down a little and condescended to take a light lunch of raw venison. He was given two days for reflection and meditation, and when he seemed to be in a more reasonable mood, the work of preparing him for a visit to the city was begun.

A running noose was made in a stout chain and put into the trap between two of the logs, and when the bear stepped his forepaw into the noose it was drawn taut and held by four men outside. Despite the strain upon the chain the bear easily threw the noose off with his other paw, letting the men fall backwards in a heap on the ground.

Again and again the trick was tried but the noose would not hold.

Then the method of working the chain was changed and the noose let down through the top of the trap, and after many failures it was drawn sharply up round his arm near the shoulder, where it held. Ten hours were consumed in the effort to secure one leg and the Monarch fought furiously every minute of the time, biting the chain, seizing it with his paws and charging about in his prison as though he were crazy. He was utterly reckless of consequences to himself, and he bit the iron so savagely that he splintered his teeth and wholly destroyed his longer tushes.

Having secured one leg, it was comparatively easy to get another chain around his other paw and two ropes around his hind legs, and then he was stretched out, spread-eagle fas.h.i.+on, on the floor of the trap.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Large Black Bear.--Page 250.]

The next move was to fasten a heavy chain around his neck in such a way that it could not choke him, and to accomplish this it was necessary to muzzle the Monarch. A stick about eighteen inches long and two inches thick was held under his nose, and he promptly seized it in his jaws. Before he dropped it a stout cord was made fast to one end of the stick, pa.s.sed over his nose, around the other end of the stick, under his jaw, and then wound around his muzzle and the stick in such a way as to bind his jaws together, a turn back of his head holding the gag firmly in place.

The Monarch was now bound, gagged and utterly helpless, but he never ceased roaring with rage at his captors and struggling to get just one blow at them with his paw. It was an easy matter for a man to get upon his back, put a chain collar around his neck, and fasten the heavy chain with a swivel to the collar. The collar was kept in place by a chain rigged like a martingale and pa.s.sed under his arms and over his back. A stout rope made fast about his body completed the Monarch's fetters and the gag was then removed from the royal mouth.

The King of the mountains was a hopeless prisoner--Gulliver, tied hand and foot by the Lilliputians.

The next morning Monarch was lashed upon a rough sled--a contrivance known to lumbermen as a "go-devil"--to make the journey down the mountain. The first team of horses procured to haul him could not be driven anywhere near the bear. They plunged and snorted and became utterly unmanageable, and finally they broke away and ran home. The next team was but little better, and small progress was made the first day.

At night the Monarch was released from the "go-devil" and secured only by his chains to a large tree. The ropes were removed from his legs, and he was allowed considerable freedom to move about, but a close watch was kept upon him. After several futile efforts to break away, he accepted the situation, stretched himself at the foot of the tree and watched the camp-fire all night.

In the morning the ropes were replaced, after a lively combat, and the bear was again lashed to the sled. Four horses were harnessed to it and the journey was resumed. Men with axes and bars went ahead to make a road, and it was with no small amount of labor that they made it pa.s.sable. The poor old bear was slammed along over the rocks and through the brush, but he never whimpered at the hardest jolts. With all the care that could be observed, it was impossible to make his ride anything but a series of b.u.mps, slides and capsizes, and the progress was slow. At the steep places men held the sled back with ropes and tried to keep it right side up.

Four days on a "go-devil" is no pleasure excursion, even for a tough grizzly, and when the Monarch was released from his uncomfortable vehicle, at the foot of the mountain, he seemed glad to get a chance to stretch himself and rest. For nearly a week he was left free of all fetters except the chain on his neck and the rope around his body, and he spent his days in slumber and his nights eating and digging a great hole in the ground. Having convinced himself that he could neither break his chain nor bite it in two, he accepted the situation with surly resignation and asked only to be let alone and fed decently.

While the bear was recuperating and becoming reconciled to what couldn't be helped, a cage was being built of Oregon pine lumber with an iron-barred door, and when it was finished he was dragged into it by the heels. As soon as he saw the ropes, Monarch knew that mischief was afoot, and when a man began throwing back into the hole the dirt that he had dug out, he mounted the heap and silently but strenuously began to dig for himself a new hole. He worked twice as fast as two men with shovels, and in his efforts to escape he only a.s.sisted in filling up the old hole.