heir hair singed as they went. The bear
started after them, but he was afraid to go through the fire, and while
he was finding a way out of the circle of burning brush and timber,
Jeff and Jess struck out down the mountain side, making about fifteen
feet at a jump, and never stopped running until they got to the creek
and out of the bear's sight.

CHAPTER XVIII.

HOW OLD PINTO DIED.

This is an incredible bear story, but it is true. George Gleason told
it to a man who knew the bear so well that he thought the old Pinto
Grizzly belonged to him and wore his brand, and as George is no bear
hunter himself, but is a plain, ordinary, truthful person, there is not
the slightest doubt that he related only the facts. George said some
of the facts were incredible before he started in. He had never heard
or read of such tenacity of life in any animal. But there are
precedents, even if George never heard of them.

The vitality of the California Grizzly is astonishing, as many a man
has sorrowful reason to know, and the tenacity of the Old Pinto's hold
on life was remarkable, even among Grizzlies. This Pinto was a famous
bear. His home was among the rocks and manzanita thickets of La Liebra
Mountain, a limestone ridge southwest of Tehachepi that divides Gen.
Beale's two ranches, Los Alamos y Agua Caliente and La Liebra, and his
range was from Tejon Pass to San Emigdio. His regular occupation was
killing Gen. Beale's cattle, and the slopes of the hills and the
_cienegas_ around Castac Lake were strewn with the bleached bones of
his prey. For twenty years that solitary old bear had been monarch of
all that Gen. Beale surveyed--to paraphrase President Lincoln's remark
to Surveyor-General Beale himself--and wrought such devastation on the
ranch that for years there had been a standing reward for his hide.

Men who had lived in the mountains and knew the old Pinto's infirmity
of temper were wary about invading his domains, and not a vaquero could
be induced to go afoot among the manzanita thickets of the limestone
ridge. The man who thought he owned the Pinto followed his trail for
two months many years ago and learned many things about him; among
others that the track of his hind foot measured fourteen inches in
length and nine inches in width; that the hair on his head and
shoulders was nearly white; that he could break a steer's neck with a
blow of his paw; that he feared neither man nor his works; that while
he