ut a silver dollar and set it like a piece of
mosaic into McKiernan's forehead, where it resisted the efforts of
nature to repair damages and caused McKiernan a thousand times more
agony than he had suffered from the Grizzly's tusks. Only the
marvelous vitality of the man saved him from the consequences of such
surgery. For days and weeks he sat in his cabin dripping his life away
out of a wound that closed, swelled with fierce pain and broke out
afresh, and the drain upon his system gave him an incredible appetite
for meat, which he devoured in Gargantuan quantities.

Then old Doctor Spencer went up to "Mountain Charlie's" cabin, took out
the silver dollar, removed a wad of eyebrow that had been pushed into
the hole made by the bear's lower tooth in the eye socket, and
McKiernan recovered.

And the first thing he did when he was able to travel was to load up a
shotgun and hunt San Jose from one end to the other for the man who had
set a silver dollar in his skull.

CHAPTER V.

IN THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW.

Over-confidence and some contempt for bears, born of easy victories
cheaply won, led one noted Californian hunter into The Valley of the
Shadow, from which he emerged content to let his fame rest wholly upon
his past record and without ardor for further distinction as a slayer
of Grizzlies. As mementoes of a fight that has become a classic in the
ursine annals of California, John W. Searles, the borax miner of San
Bernardino, kept for many years in his office a two-ounce bottle filled
with bits of bone and teeth from his own jaw, and a Spencer rifle
dented in stock and barrel by the teeth of a Grizzly.

On a hunting trip in Kern county, Mr. Searles had a remarkable run of
luck and piled three bears in a heap without moving out of his tracks
or getting the least sign of fight. It was so easy that he insisted
upon going right through the Tehachepi range and killing all the
Grizzlies infesting the mountains. He and his party made camp in
March, 1870, not far from the headquarters of General Beale's Liebra
ranch in the northern part of Los Angeles county. Romulo Pico was then
in charge at the Liebra, and nearly thirty years later, while hunting a
notorious bear on the scene of Searles's adventure, he told me the
story of the fight.

Searles was armed with a Spencer repeater but had shot away the
ammunition adapted to the rifle and had been able to procure only some
cartridges which fitted the chamber