re?"

"Not so many as there used to be," replied Mr. Melton. "They're being
pushed further and further north as the country gets more settled. Still
there are enough around to make it advisable to keep your eye peeled for
trouble whenever you get a little way further up in the mountains. Every
once in a while we find the body of a steer partly eaten, and we can
always tell when a grizzly has pulled it down."

"How's that?" asked Tom.

"By the way he covers it up," answered Melton. "He always heaps up a pile
of brush or dried grass over the carcass. I reckon it's his sign manual
to tell other animals who may be skulking around that it's his kill, and
that there'll be trouble if any of them go monkeying around it. At any
rate, they don't fool with it. They know he's king in these parts.
Wherever the grizzly sits is the head of the table."

"Are they really as savage as they are cracked up to be?" asked Bert. "If
so, it must be great sport hunting them."

"Are they savage?" echoed their host pityingly. "Say, son, there's
nothing on four feet as full of hate and poison, unless perhaps a
gorilla. And if it ever came to a tussle between them two, my money
would go on the grizzly every time.

"As to it's being great sport hunting them, it's the grizzly that usually
does the hunting. For myself, I haven't any ambition that way. I'm
perfectly willing to give him his full half of the road whenever we meet.
And we won't meet at all, if I see him first. I've had more than one
tussle with an old silver-tip, and I've got a few hides up at the house
to serve as reminders. But it's always been when it was more dangerous to
run than it was to stay and fight it out. There ain't many things on four
feet or two that I'd go far out of my way to keep from meeting, but when
it comes to a grizzly I haven't any pride at all. There are less exciting
forms of amusement. No, my boy, if you're thinking of tackling a grizzly,
take a fool's advice and don't do it."

"But a bullet in the right place would stop them as surely as it would
anything else, I should think," ventured Tom.

"That's just the point," said Melton. "It's mighty hard to put a bullet
in the right place. If you're on horseback, your horse is so mortally
scared at sight of the brute that he won't let you get a steady aim.
There's nothing on earth that a mustang fears so much as a bear. And, if
you're on foot, he moves so swiftly and dodges so cleverly, that it's
hard to pick