ile intentions, and indeed with
my present experience I think it likely that if I had not fired it would
have flinched at the last moment and either retreated or gone by me.
But I am not a rhinoceros mind reader, and its actions were such as to
warrant my regarding it as a suspicious character. I stopped it with a
couple of bullets, and then followed it up and killed it. The skins
of all these animals which I thus killed are in the National Museum at
Washington.

But, as I said above, the only narrow escape I met with was not from
one of these dangerous African animals, but from a grizzly bear. It was
about twenty-four years ago. I had wounded the bear just at sunset, in a
wood of lodge-pole pines, and, following him, I wounded him again, as he
stood on the other side of a thicket. He then charged through the brush,
coming with such speed and with such an irregular gait that, try as I
would, I was not able to get the sight of my rifle on the brain-pan,
though I hit him very hard with both the remaining barrels of my
magazine Winchester. It was in the days of black powder, and the smoke
hung. After my last shot, the first thing I saw was the bear's left paw
as he struck at me, so close that I made a quick movement to one side.
He was, however, practically already dead, and after another jump, and
while in the very act of trying to turn to come at me, he collapsed like
a shot rabbit.

By the way, I had a most exasperating time trying to bring in his skin.
I was alone, traveling on foot with one very docile little mountain mare
for a pack pony. The little mare cared nothing for bears or anything
else, so there was no difficulty in packing her. But the man without
experience can hardly realize the work it was to get that bearskin off
the carcass and then to pack it, wet, slippery, and heavy, so that it
would ride evenly on the pony. I was at the time fairly well versed in
packing with a "diamond hitch," the standby of Rocky Mountain packers in
my day; but the diamond hitch is a two-man job; and even working with
a "squaw hitch," I got into endless trouble with that wet and slippery
bearskin. With infinite labor I would get the skin on the pony and run
the ropes over it until to all seeming it was fastened properly. Then
off we would start, and after going about a hundred yards I would notice
the hide beginning to bulge through between two ropes. I would shift one
of them, and then the hide would bulge somewhere else. I wou