upon a big steer he had killed.]

Pinto had the reputation of being not only dangerous but malevolent,
and there were oft told tales of domiciliary visits paid by him at the
cabins of settlers, and of aggressive advances upon mounted vaqueros,
who were saved by the speed of their horses. Doubtless the bear was
audacious in foraging and indifferent to the presence of man, but he
was not malevolent. Indeed, I have yet to hear on any credible
authority of a malevolent bear, or, for that matter, any other wild
animal in North America whose disposition and habit is to seek trouble
with man and go out of its way with the deliberate purpose of attacking
him. For many weeks I camped by that spring, much of the time alone,
and without even a dog, with only a blanket for covering and the
heavens for a roof, and my sleep never was disturbed by anything larger
than a wood rat. My camp was on one of Pinto's beaten trails, but he
abandoned it and passed fifty yards to one side or the other whenever
his business took him down that way, and he never meddled with me or
mine. One night, as his tracks showed, he came to within twenty feet
of my bivouac, sniffed around inquiringly and passed on.

I built two stout traps for Pinto's benefit, and day after day I
dragged bait around and through the manzanita thickets on the ridge and
over all his trails, and sometimes I found tracks so fresh that I was
satisfied he had heard me coming and had turned aside. There were
cougar and lynx tracks all over the mountains, but I seldom saw the
animals and then only got fleeting glimpses of them as they fled out of
my way.

Many of my prejudices and all my story-book notions about the behavior
of the carnivorae were discredited by experience, and I was forced to
recognize the plain truth that the only mischievous animal, the only
creature meditating and planning evil on that mountain--excepting of
course the evil incident to the procurement of food--was a man with a
gun. I was the only really dangerous and unnecessarily destructive
animal in the woods, and all the rest were afraid of me.

After a time, because I had no intention of killing Pinto if I should
meet him, I quit carrying a rifle, except when I wanted venison, and
tramped all over the mountain in daylight or in darkness without giving
much thought to possible encounters. True, I carried a revolver, but
that was force of habit mainly, and a six-shooter is company of a sort
to a man