ings, and gaunt, weak
trail "doughgies," which had been brought in very late by a Texas
cow-outfit--for that year several herds were driven up from the
overstocked, eaten-out, and drought-stricken ranges of the far south.
Judging from the signs, the crafty old grisly, as cunning as he was
ferocious, usually lay in wait for the cattle when they came down
to water, choosing some thicket of dense underbrush and twisted
cottonwoods, through which they had to pass before reaching the sand
banks on the river's brink. Sometimes he pounced on them as they fed
through the thick, low cover of the bottoms, where an assailant could
either lie in ambush by one of the numerous cattle trails, or else creep
unobserved towards some browsing beast. When within a few feet a quick
rush carried him fairly on the terrified quarry; and though but a clumsy
animal compared to the great cats, the grisly is far quicker than one
would imagine from viewing his ordinary lumbering gait. In one or two
instances the bear had apparently grappled with his victim by seizing it
near the loins and striking a disabling blow over the small of the back;
in at least one instance he had jumped on the animal's head, grasping
it with his fore-paws, while with his fangs he tore open the throat
or crunched the neck bone. Some of his victims were slain far from the
river, in winding, brushy coulies of the Bad Lands, where the broken
nature of the ground rendered stalking easy. Several of the ranchmen,
angered at their losses, hunted their foe eagerly, but always with ill
success; until one of them put poison in a carcass, and thus at last, in
ignoble fashion, slew the cattle-killer.

Mr. Clarence King informs me that he was once eye-witness to a bear's
killing a steer, in California. The steer was in a small pasture, and
the bear climbed over, partly breaking down, the rails which barred the
gateway. The steer started to run, but the grisly overtook it in four or
five bounds, and struck it a tremendous blow on the flank with one paw,
knocking several ribs clear away from the spine, and killing the animal
outright by the shock.

Horses no less than horned cattle at times fall victims to this great
bear, which usually spring on them from the edge of a clearing as they
graze in some mountain pasture, or among the foot-hills; and there is
no other animal of which horses seem so much afraid. Generally the bear,
whether successful or unsuccessful in its raids on cattle an