s, the long regular red-and-yellow pyramid of Bear Tooth
Mountain glowed in vivid light with amazing purity of color; while
between me and it the hills fell away, crossed by intersecting bands of
dark firs, and between marvellous deceits of fertile farm-lands, hedges
and orchards. Here and there on the plain tiny lakes lit up the sombre
grasses, and lower down the valley the waters of Clarke's Fork, now
green, now white with foam, swept with sudden curve to the north-east,
and were lost in the walls of its canyon like a scimitar half sheathed.
On my right, across the vast grass-slopes of this great valley, on a
gradual hill-slope, rose the most remarkable of the lime dikes I have
seen. It must enclose with its gigantic wall a space of nearly two miles
in width, in the centre of which a wild confusion of tinted limestone
strata, disturbed by some old convulsion of Nature, resembles the huge
ruins of a great town.

Soon after my return to camp, C. and the doctor came in with great
triumph, having slain four bears. I was not present on this occasion,
but I am inclined to fancy, as regards the doctor, that he verily
believed the chief end and aim of existence for him was to kill bears,
while C. had an enthusiasm of like nature, somewhat toned down.

After a wild ride on cayooses across Clarke's Fork and on the glowing
pink side-slopes of Bear Tooth, and a camp in the hills, the ponies,
which are always astray, were caught, and a game-trail followed among
the mountains. Suddenly, Houston, in a stage-whisper, exclaimed, "We've
got him! He's an old buster, he is!" He had seen a large gray
bear--improperly called a grizzly--feeding a mile away in a long wide
cooly. A rough, scrambling ride under cover of a spur, amid snow-drifts
and tumbled trees, enabled the bear-hunters to tie up their ponies and
push on afoot. If a man desire to lose confidence in his physical
powers, let him try a good run with a Winchester rifle in hand nine
thousand feet above tidewater. Rounding the edge of a hill and crossing
a snow-drift, they came in view of Bruin sixty yards away. He came
straight toward them against the wind, when there appeared on the left
Bruin No. 2, to which the doctor directed his attention. Both bears fell
at the crack of the rifles, and with grunt and snort rolled to the foot
of the cooly. Houston climbed a snowbank to reconnoitre, aware, as there
were no trees to climb, that an open cooly was no good place in which
to face