Produced by Sonya Schermann, Barry Abrahamsen, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
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ILLUSTRATED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR AND J. B. KERFOOT
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS NEW YORK - - - - 1910
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THE BLACK BEAR: ITS DISTRIBUTION AND HABITS 51
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The next day we cut a hole in the sack 22 so that he could ride with his head out
Front foot of a black bear, front track 62 of a black bear; front foot of a grizzly bear, front track of a grizzly bear
Hind foot of a black bear, hind track of 64 a black bear; hind foot of a grizzly bear, hind track of a grizzly bear
She began to swing her head from side to 106 side
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MY story of Ben starts on the 22d of June, 1890. Ben’s own story had begun some four or five months earlier, in the den where his mother, who was a Black Bear, had spent the winter; but although I came to know Ben rather intimately later on, he never spoke of his early childhood to me and I never asked him about it. So we’ll take that part for granted.
Early in May of that year three of us, Martin Spencer, Jack O’Brien, and myself, had set out from Spokane, Washington, to hunt grizzlies and prospect for gold in the rugged and, at that time, largely unexplored Bitter Root Mountains, in Idaho. We had a small pack train and a large stock of enthusiasm, and we arrived at the foothills with both in good condition. But although it was well past the middle of the month when we reached the mountains, we soon found ourselves floundering in snow-drifts that increased in depth as we climbed, and when, for several days on end, we had cut our way with a two-handed saw through fallen trees that barred our progress and had dug the saddle and pack horses out of pot holes in the snow into which a misstep or an act of deliberate stupidity had sent them rolling, both men and horses had become exhausted. And so, when a cold storm had added itself to our other troubles, we had pitched camp in a little opening facing the south and settled down to wait for better days. And we had waited there three solid weeks.