one of fremont’s men, mountain joe, had taken a fancy to me down in oregon, and finally, to put three volumes in three lines, i turned up as partner in his soda springs ranch on the sacramento, where the famous shasta-water is now bottled, i believe. then the indians broke out, burned us up and we followed and fought them in castle rocks, and i was shot down. then my father came on to watch by my side, where i lay, under protection of soldiers, at the mouth of shot creek canyon.
as the manzanita berries began to turn the mountain sides red and the brown pine quills to sift down their perfumed carpets at our feet, i began to feel some strength and wanted to fight, but i had had enough of indians. i wanted to fight grizzly bears this time. the fact is, they used to leave tracks in the pack trail every night, and right close about the camp, too, as big as the head of a barrel.
now father was well up in woodcraft, no man better, but he never fired a gun. never, in his seventy years of life among savages, did that gentle quaker, school-master, magistrate and christian ever fire a gun. but he always allowed me to have my own way as a hunter, and now that i was getting well of my wound he was so glad and grateful that he willingly joined in with the soldiers to help me kill one of these huge bears that had made the big tracks.
do you know why a beast, a bear of all beasts, is so very much afraid of fire? well, in the first place, as said before, a bear is a gentleman, in dress as well as address, and so likes a decent coat. if a bear should get his coat singed he would hide away from sight of both man and beast for half a year. but back of his pride is the fact that a fat bear will burn like a candle; the fire will not stop with the destruction of his coat. and so, mean as it was, in the olden days, when bears were as common in california as cows are now, men used to take advantage of this fear and kindle pine-quill fires in and around his haunts in the head of canyons to drive him out and down and into ambush.
read two or three chapters here between the lines—lots of plans, preparations, diagrams. i was to hide near camp and wait—to place the crescent of pine-quill fires and all that. then at twilight they all went out and away on the mountain sides around the head of the canyon, and i hid behind a big rock near by the extinguished camp-fire, with my old muzzle-loading kentucky rifle, lifting my eyes away up and around to the head of the manzanita canyon looking for the fires. a light! one, two, three, ten! a sudden crescent of forked flames, and all the fight and impetuosity of a boy of only a dozen years was uppermost, and i wanted a bear!
all alone i waited; got hot, cold, thirsty, cross as a bear and so sick of sitting there that i was about to go to my blankets, for the flames had almost died out on the hills, leaving only a circle of little dots and dying embers, like a fading diadem on the mighty lifted brow of the glorious manzanita mountain. and now the new moon came, went softly and sweetly by, like a shy, sweet maiden, hiding down, down out of sight.
crash! his head was thrown back, not over his shoulder, as you may read but never see, but down by his left foot, as he looked around and back up the brown mountain side. he had stumbled, or rather, he had stepped on himself, for a bear gets down hill sadly. if a bear ever gets after you, you had better go hill and go down hill fast. it will make him mad, but that is not your affair. i never saw a bear go down hill in a good humor. what nature meant by making a bear so short in the arms i don’t know. indians say he was first a man and walked upright with a club on his shoulder, but sinned and fell. as evidence of this, they show that he can still stand up and fight with his fists when hard pressed, but more of this later on.
this huge brute before me looked almost white in the tawny twilight as he stumbled down through the steep tangle of chaparral into the opening on the stony bar of the river.
he had evidently been terribly tangled up and disgusted while in the bush and jungle, and now, well out of it, with the foamy, rumbling, roaring sacramento river only a few rods beyond him, into which he could plunge with his glossy coat, he seemed to want to turn about and shake his huge fists at the crescent of fire in the pine-quills that had driven him down the mountain. he threw his enormous bulk back on his haunches and rose up, and rose up, and rose up! oh, the majesty of this king of our continent, as he seemed to still keep rising! then he turned slowly around on his great hinder feet to look back; he pushed his nose away out, then drew it back, twisted his short, thick neck, like that of a beer-drinking german, and then for a final observation he tiptoed up, threw his high head still higher in the air and wiggled it about and sniffed and sniffed and—bang!
i shot at him from ambush, with his back toward me, shot at his back! for shame! henry highton would not have done that; nor, indeed, would i or any other real sportsman do such a thing now; but i must plead the “baby act,” and all the facts, and also my sincere penitence, and proceed.
the noble brute did not fall, but let himself down with dignity and came slowly forward. hugely, ponderously, solemnly, he was coming. and right here, if i should set down what i thought about—where father was, the soldiers, anybody, everybody else, whether i had best just fall on my face and “play possum” and put in a little prayer or two on the side, like—well, i was going on to say that if i should write all that flashed and surged through my mind in the next three seconds, you would be very tired. i was certain i had not hit the bear at all. as a rule, you can always see the “fur fly,” as hunters put it; only it is not fur, but dust, that flies.
but this bear was very fat and hot, and so there could have been no dust to fly. after shuffling a few steps forward and straight for the river, he suddenly surged up again, looked all about, just as before, then turned his face to the river and me, the tallest bear that ever tiptoed up and up and up in the sierras. one, two, three steps—on came the bear! and my gun empty! then he fell, all at once and all in a heap. no noise, no moaning or groaning at all, no clutching at the ground, as men have seen indians and even white men do; as if they would hold the earth from passing away—nothing of that sort. he lay quite still, head down hill, on his left side, gave just one short, quick breath, and then, pulling up his great right paw, he pushed his nose and eyes under it, as if to shut out the light forever, or, maybe, to muffle up his face as when “great cæsar fell.”
and that was all. i had killed a grizzly bear; nearly as big as the biggest ox.
