CHAPTER X--The Ranger Tells a Grizzly Bear Story Before the Camp-Fire

"The first thing you want to remember about old Mr. Silver Tip," said the Ranger, "is that he's a good deal like a lot o' big, strong men, he's too powerful to be scrappy. You hear a lot o' stories about grizzlies bein' terrible fighters, and they sure can fight when they're cornered, or when old mother bear thinks her cubs are in danger. But if a silver tip can possibly get away, he gets. That's not because he's afraid, either, of anything on earth except a high power rifle. It's because he ain't lookin' for trouble. Mr. Silver Tip is afraid of a rifle, all right, and he's about the smartest of all animals in keeping away from it, too. But there's nothing else he's afraid of, and before man came into these mountains to shoot him, he just wandered around here, the king pin, and nobody bothered him a bit, no sir."

"But don't grizzlies have to fight to kill anything as big as a moose?" asked Bob.

"They don't kill anything as big as a moose," the Ranger said. "Oh, once in a blue moon an old bear will go wrong, and take to killing cattle. Down in Wyoming there was a silver tip used to kill cattle, and two hundred men and dogs hunted him a month, and never did get him. But mostly they live on roots and berries and mice and ground squirrels and dead birds and animal carcases something else has killed. Why, I've seen a grizzly digging out a ground squirrel in the early spring, just after he'd come out of his winter nest, not far from my cabin, and a lot of sheep, down there to get the early grass, walking right up close to him to see what he was up to. When they got too close--sheep are kind o' curious, like kids and women--he just _woufed_ at 'em, to drive 'em off. They weren't afraid of him eatin' 'em, though, at all, and he could have cleaned out the flock with about two bites.

"Well, this is just to show you how little fear Mr. Silver Tip has that anything but a man can do him any harm, or will dare try it. I was hunting once over west of the Flathead River, in bear country, and I had a dead horse out in a clearing for bait. Up in a tree on the edge of the clearing I'd built myself a kind of blind, where I could watch. You see, most bears can climb trees, but the grizzly can't, so when one comes after you, Bob, you just beat it up the nearest trunk."

"Thanks for the tip--the silver tip, as you might say," the boy laughed.

"Well," Mills went on, "by 'n' by along into the clearing come two lions, long, lean, hungry lookin', sneaky beasts they are, too--I hate 'em--and they fell to on the carcase, and began to eat. Thinks I, I'd wait and see what happened, instead of killin' 'em and maybe scarin' off the bear with the shots so's he'd never come back. Sure enough, the old boy came galumphing along presently, and went up on his hind legs when he saw the lions at his festal board, as you might say. Then he dropped down again, and just walked right up, stuck his big shoulders in between the two lions, shovin' 'em apart, and began to eat."

"That's no way to treat a lion," said Lucy.

"No, specially as one of 'em was a lady lion," Mills laughed. "But that's what old Silver Tip did. The lions naturally didn't like it, and one of 'em snarled, and up with his paw and fetched the bear a nasty swipe. Then I expected to see trouble.

"But what do you think the old bear did? He just kind of side-cut with one of his big paws and caught that lion a blow that sent him spinning head over tail twenty feet down the slope. Then he went right on eating. He didn't look at the other lion, he didn't even look around to see what the first one was goin' to do. 'Peared as if he was quite certain what they'd both do, and they done it. They both took a quick sneak into the woods, and left Mr. Silver Tip to his feast. You couldn't have brushed off a mosquito more calmly. I says to myself then that it showed how sure of himself the grizzly is--he's king of the forest, all right."

"And did you shoot him after that?" Lucy asked.

"Sure I shot him."

"I think you were real horrid," she said.

"Maybe," Mills answered. "But I'm still wearin' his skin in winter."

"How many shots did it take?" asked one of the congressmen. "I've always heard you have to pump a grizzly full of lead, and then use a knife to defend yourself, after your last shell is emptied."

"The feller that told you that was a bum shot," said the Ranger. "'Course there are a lot of bum shots come out here huntin'. One bullet, in the brain, the upper part of the heart, or the right place in the spine, will drop a silver tip like a sack o' grain. You've got to know where to hit, and you've got to hit there, naturally. Trouble is, green hunters get scared or rattled, and don't aim right, and half the time when they think they're plugging the bear they're really peppering the rocks behind him. I wouldn't want to hunt 'em myself with a single shot rifle, but I could if I had to. A city chap in one of our parties once, over in the Blackfeet forest, smashed all four of a bear's legs with bullets, and then the bear, tryin' to get away, fell into a stream and drowned to death. Our cook asked the feller why he didn't chuck him in to start with, and save shells."

"When you going to show us a bear?" Bob demanded.

"Mercy, I do hope it isn't very soon!" cried Bob's mother. "I'm sure _I_ don't want to meet one. I don't suppose there are any in the Park any more."

"Oh, yes, more 'n ever," said the Ranger, managing a secret wink to Joe. "Why, there was two women from Boston once, sitting in broad day on the steep cut bank of a stream, and they heard crashings in the bush, and looked back and seen a big grizzly coming right toward 'em, and they yelled like Comanches and fell right down the bank into the water, and waded across up to their necks and beat it back to camp."

"Better stick close to brave little Bobbie, ma," laughed her son. "I won't let the naughty big bear bite you. But when are you going to show me one, Mr. Mills?"

"Day after to-morrow," said the Ranger.

Joe pricked up his ears. It sounded as if Mills meant it.

"Is that a threat or a promise?" Lucy asked.

"Promise for Bob, a threat for Mrs. Jones, I guess," said the Ranger, rising from the ground, and adding, "Who's ready for bed?"

"Better ask who isn't," somebody laughed.

Joe went as far out on the rocky spit into the lake as he could get; he could see the dying camp-fire gleaming red back under the trees; and all around him, over the dim, starlit water, rose the majestic mountains, great walls of shadow rearing up half-way to the top of the sky. It was a still, solemn scene, and he felt very small as he crouched by the lake and cleaned his teeth in water that was almost as cold as ice.

When he got back to camp every one was abed, and he crawled into the tent with Mills and wrapped himself up in his blankets, with only his poncho for a mattress, and almost before he had got his body fitted into the unevennesses of the ground he was fast asleep.