Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/717

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
A BEAR HUNT.
573

CHAPTER XLIV.


A GRIZZLEY HUNTS THE HUNTER.—SHOOTING SEALS IN ALASKAN WATERS.—I BECOME A SEATTLE HOTEL KEEPER AND THE BIG FIRE CLOSES ME OUT.—SOME REST.

On my arrival at San Francisco the first thing was to get rid of my surplus horses. During the time I was selling them I made the acquaintance of a man named Walter Fiske, who was engaged in raising Angora goats, about one hundred and twenty miles north from San Francisco, and who was something of a hunter also. Mr. Fiske invited me to go home with him and have a bear hunt.

Being tired of the city, I accompanied Mr. Fiske to his ranch. He said he knew where there was a patch of wild clover on which the grizzlies fed, so we were off for a bear hunt. We soon found where they fed and watered. They had a plain trail from their feeding place to the water. Mr. Fiske being hard of hearing proposed that I stop on the feeding ground and he would take his stand down on the trail, and in case I should get into trouble I could run down the trail, and if he were to get into a tight place he would run up the trail to where I was. I took my stand and had not been there long until I saw, just behind, in about twenty feet of me, a huge grizzly