Part 18

Much having been said about bears of late, a young Californian of great fortune and enterprise resolved to set some questions at rest, and, quite regardless of cost or consequences, sent into the mountains for a live grizzly. The details of his capture, the plain story of the long, wild quest, the courage, the cunning, the final submission of the monster, and then the last bulletin about his health, habits and all that, make so instructive and pleasing a narrative that I have asked for permission to add it to my own stories. The bear described is at present in our San Francisco Zoo, a fine and greatly admired monarch.

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"Are there any true grizzly bears in California?"

"Undoubtedly there are."

"I don't know about it. I have a great deal of doubt. Where are they?"

"In the Sierra Madre, in Touloumne Canyon, in Siskiyou County and probably in many other mountain districts."

"That may be so, but nobody can find them. Now, do you think you could find them?"

"I think I could if I should try."

"Would you undertake to get a genuine grizzly in this State?"

"Yes, if you want one. How will you have him--dead or alive?"

"Alive."

This conversation was held last May between the proprietor of the Examiner and special reporter Allen Kelly.

A week ago Kelly brought home an enormous grizzly bear, lodged the animal temporarily in one of the cages in Woodward's Gardens and reported to the editor that he had finished that assignment.

The following is his account of the hunt and capture.

The Examiner expedition began the search for a grizzly early in June, starting from Santa Paula and striking into the mountains at Tar Creek, where the Sespe oil wells are bored. The Examiner correspondent detailed to catch a bear was accompanied by De Moss Bowers of Ventura, who was moved by love of adventure to offer his assistance.

During the first part of the trip the party numbered five persons, including Dad Coffman, a spry old gentleman of seventy-two years, who was out for the benefit of his health, a packer and guide, and a person from Santa Paula called "Doc," who was loaded to the muzzle with misinformation and inspired with the notion that it was legitimate to plunder the expedition because the Examiner had plenty of money. The packer was "Doc's" son, a good man to work, but unfortunately afflicted with similar hallucinations. The expedition was plundered because these persons were trusted on the recommendation of a gentleman who ought to have known better.

At Tar Creek the correspondent was told that the Stone Corral bear, a somewhat noted grizzly that had killed his man, had been recently on Squaw Flat, and had prowled about an old cabin at night, sorting over the garbage heap and pile of tin cans at the door, but when the expedition passed the cabin no fresh sign was found, and the tracks on Squaw Flat were at least a week old.

The first camp was in a clump of chincapin brush at Stone Corral. There were bear tracks in the soft ground at the edge of the creek, which induced the hunters to spend two days in prospecting that part of the country. One of the proposed plans for capturing the bear was to run him out of the rocks and brush to some reasonably open bit of country like Squaw Flat or one of the small level patches near camp and lasso him, but the impracticable nature of that scheme was soon demonstrated. On the next day after making camp the Examiner's own bear catcher went out on a nervous black horse called "Nig" to find out where the Stone Corral bear was spending the summer and incidentally to get some venison. The Stone Corral bear was there or thereabouts beyond any doubt. He ran the correspondent out of the brush and showed a perverse disposition to do all the hunting himself. "Nig" would not stand to let his rider take a shot, but when the bear gave notice of his presence by growling and smashing down the brush twenty yards away, he wheeled and bolted towards camp. Near the camp Dad was found rounding up the other horses, who had just been scared from their pasturage by another wandering bear. It was clear that not a horse in the outfit could be ridden to within roping distance of a bear, and it is doubtful if three horses fit for such a job could be found in the country. Some years ago the ranchmen and vaqueros frequently caught bears with a rope, but even then it was difficult to train horses to the work, and only one horse out of a hundred could be cured of his instinctive dread of a grizzly.

It was clear also that there were some defects in the plan of driving the Stone Corral bear out of the brush, chief of which was the bear's inconsiderate desire to do the driving himself. As the hunting would have to be done afoot, the prospects incident to an attempt to round up a big grizzly among the rocks and chaparral were not peculiarly alluring. Trapping was the only other method that could be suggested, but the absence of any heavy timber would make that difficult.

The Stone Corral is a singular arrangement of huge sandstone ledges on the slope of a mountain, forming a rough inclosure about a quarter of a mile wide and three or four times as long. The country is very rugged and broken for miles around, and except along the creek and on the trail a horse cannot be ridden through it. The problem of how to catch a bear in such a place was not solved, because the bear cut short its consideration by marching past the camp and lumbering down the creek bed toward the Alder Creek Canyon and the Sespe country. The correspondent stood upon the sandstone ledge as he went by, and yelled at him, but he did not quicken his pace.

When it became evident that the bear was bound for the Sespe, the horses were saddled. Balaam the Burro was concealed under a mountainous pack, and the march was resumed over the Alder Creek trail to the deep gorge through which the Sespe River runs. The man who made the Alder Creek trail was not born to build roads. He laid it out right over the top of a high and steep mountain, when by making a slight detour, he could have avoided a difficult and unnecessary climb. In the broiling hot sun of a breezeless day in June, the march over the mountains was hard on men and horses, and the pace was necessarily slow.

The heat coaxed the rattlesnakes out of their holes, and the angry hum of their rattles was an almost incessant accompaniment to the hoof beats of the horses. Where the trail wound along a steep slope, affording but slight foothold for an animal, a more than unusually strenuous and insistent singing of a snake, disturbed from his sunny siesta, caused Balaam to jump aside. Balaam avoided the snake, but he lost his balance and rolled down the slope, heels in the air and pack underneath. The acrobatic feats achieved by Balaam in his struggles to regain his footing were watched by an admiring and solicitous audience, and when he cleverly took advantage of the slight obstruction offered by a manzanita bush, and got safely upon his feet, he was loudly applauded. The deep solicitude of the party for the safety of Balaam and his pack was accounted for when he scrambled back to the trail and gravely walked up to the packer to have his pack straightened. Every man anxiously felt of the pack, and heaved a sigh of relief. The bottles containing O. P. S., antidote for snake bite, were not broken, but it was a narrow escape.

"Great Beeswax!" said the Doctor, "suppose those bottles had been smashed and then some one of us should go to work and bite himself with a snake! Wouldn't that be a fix?"

"Dogdurn if it don't make my blood run cold to think of it," said Dad.

Everybody's blood seemed to be congealing, and as the pack was loose and the antidote accessible, an ounce of prevention was administered to each man, and Balaam was rewarded for his timely agility with a handful of sugar.

No more accidents occurred, and late in the afternoon the cavalcade slid, coasted and scrambled down the last steep hill into the Sespe Canyon, where a camp was made under an immense oak beside a deep, rocky pool. That evening, around the camp-fire, some strange bear stories were evolved from either the memories or imagination of the hunters.

In the morning the search for bear signs was resumed and prosecuted until noon without success. Dad was lured by the swarms of trout in the stream, and went fishing. Dad is not a scientific fly fisherman. His favorite method is to select a shady nook on the bank, sit down with his back against a rock, tie a sinker to a large and gaudy fly, and angle on the bottom for the biggest trout he can see. He generally carries a book in his pocket, and when the trout remains unresponsive to the allurements of the gaudy fly, he fastens his rod to a bush and reads until he falls asleep.

In the afternoon one of the party went out over a long, brushy ridge, and the correspondent pushed on down the gorge in search of bear signs. All the bear tracks led up toward the Hot Springs Canyon, indicating that the grizzlies had begun their annual migration to the Alamo, Frazier and Pine mountains, where large bands of sheep are herded through the summer. Some of the tracks were large and fresh, and a person might come upon a bear at any time in the bottom of the canyon. Preparations were made for following the bears and directions given for an early start in the morning. The Doctor recollected that he had important business in Santa Paula that required his immediate attention, and he wouldn't have time to follow the grizzlies through the rugged passes of the mountains. Accordingly, he and Dad decided to remain in the Sespe camp a day or two, enjoy the fishing, and then return to Santa Paula, and the bear hunting party that saddled up and struck out on the trail of the grizzly in the morning was reduced to three.