Biography of a Grizzly | Page 9

the Meteetsee Valley since first he betook himself there,
and his character had been shaped by many little adventures with traps
and his wild rivals of the mountains. But there was none of the latter
that he now feared, and he knew enough to avoid the first, for that
penetrating odor of man and iron was a never-failing warning,
especially after an experience which befell him in his sixth year.
His ever-reliable nose told him that there was a dead Elk down among
the timber.
[Illustration]
He went up the wind, and there, sure enough, was the great delicious
carcass, already torn open at the very best place. True, there was that
terrible man-and-iron taint, but it was so slight and the feast so
tempting that after circling around and inspecting the carcass from his
eight feet of stature, as he stood erect, he went cautiously forward, and
at once was caught by his left paw in an enormous Bear-trap. He roared
with pain and slashed about in a fury. But this was no Beaver-trap; it
was a big forty-pound Bear-catcher, and he was surely caught.
Wahb fairly foamed with rage, and madly grit his teeth upon the trap.
Then he remembered his former experiences. He placed the trap
between his hind legs, with a hind paw on each spring, and pressed
down with all his weight. But it was not enough. He dragged off the
trap and its clog, and went clanking up the mountain. Again and again
he tried to free his foot, but in vain, till he came where a great trunk
crossed the trail a few feet from the ground. By chance, or happy
thought, he reared again under this and made a new attempt. With a
hind foot on each spring and his mighty shoulders underneath the tree,
he bore down with his titanic strength: the great steel springs gave way,
the jaws relaxed, and he tore out his foot. So Wahb was free again,
though he left behind a great toe which had been nearly severed by the

first snap of the steel.
Again Wahb had a painful wound to nurse, and as he was a left-handed
Bear,--that is, when he wished to turn a rock over he stood on the right
paw and turned with the left,--one result of this disablement was to rob
him for a time of all those dainty foods that are found under rocks or
logs. The wound healed at last, but he never forgot that experience, and
thenceforth the pungent smell of man and iron, even without the gun
smell, never failed to enrage him.
Many experiences had taught him that it is better to run if he only
smelled the hunter or heard him far away, but to fight desperately if the
man was close at hand. And the cow-boys soon came to know that the
Upper Meteetsee was the range of a Bear that was better let alone.

II.
One day after a long absence Wahb came into the lower part of his
range, and saw to his surprise one of the wooden dens that men make
for themselves. As he came around to get the wind, he sensed the taint
that never failed to infuriate him now, and a moment later he heard a
loud bang and felt a stinging shock in his left hind leg, the old stiff leg.
He wheeled about, in time to see a man running toward the new-made
shanty. Had the shot been in his shoulder Wahb would have been
helpless, but it was not.
Mighty arms that could toss pine logs like broomsticks, paws that with
one tap could crush the biggest Bull upon the range, claws that could
tear huge slabs of rock from the mountain-side--what was even the
deadly rifle to them!
When the man's partner came home that night he found him on the
reddened shanty floor. The bloody trail from outside and a shaky,
scribbled note on the back of a paper novel told the tale.
It was Wahb done it. I seen him by the spring and wounded him. I tried
to git on the shanty, but he ketched me. My God, how I suffer! JACK.
It was all fair. The man had invaded the Bear's country, had tried to
take the Bear's life, and had lost his own. But Jack's partner swore he
would kill that Bear.
He took up the trail and followed it up the cañon, and there
bushwhacked and hunted day after day. He put out baits and traps, and
at length one day he heard a _crash, clatter, thump_, and a huge rock

bounded down a bank into a wood, scaring out a couple of deer that
floated away like thistle-down. Miller thought at first that it was a
land-slide;