nothin' would do me but I should go
back to my old business of _trappin'_ the beasts, only with one big
difference. I wanted to go in fer takin' them alive, so as to sell
them to menageries an' all that sort of thing. An' it was no pipe
dream, fer I done well at it from the first. But that's not here nor
there. I was gittin' tired of it, after a lot o' travellin' an' some
lively kind of scrapes; so I made up my mind to finish up with a
grizzly, an' then git back to trainin', which was what I was cut out
fer, after all.

"Well, I wanted a grizzly; an' it wasn't long before I found one. We
were campin' among the foothills of the upper end of the Sierra Nevada
range, in northern California. It was a good prospectin' ground fer
grizzly, an' we found lots o' signs. I wanted one not too big fer
convenience, an' not so old as to be too set in his ways an' too proud
to larn. I had three good men with me, an' we scattered ourselves over
a big bit o' ground, lookin' fer a likely trail. When I stumbled on to
that chap in the cage yonder, what Captain Bird admires so, I knew
right off _he_ wasn't what I was after. But the queer thing was that
_he_ didn't seem to feel that way about _me_. He was after me before I
had time to think of anything jest suitable to the occasion."

"Where in thunder was yer gun?" demanded the river-man.

"That was jest the trouble!" answered Toomey. "Ye see, I'd stood the
gun agin a tree, in a dry place, while I stepped over a bit o' boggy
ground, intendin' to lay down an' drink out of a leetle spring. Well,
the bear was handier to that gun than I was. When he come fer me, I
tell ye I didn't go back fer the gun. I ran straight up the hill, an'
him too close at my heels fer convenience. Then I remembered that a
grizzly don't run his best when he goes up hill on a slant, so on the
slant I went. It worked, I reckon, fer though I couldn't say I gained
on him much, it was soothin' to observe that he didn't seem to gain on
me.

"Fer maybe well on to three hundred yards it was a fine race, and I
was beginnin' to wonder if the bear was gittin' as near winded as I
was, when slap, I come right out on the crest of the ridge, which jest
ahead o' me jutted out in a sort of elbow. What there was on the other
side I couldn't see, and couldn't take time to inquire. I jest had to
chance it, hopin' it might be somethin' less than a thousand foot
drop. I ran straight to the edge, and jest managed to throw myself
flat on