hat we chanced
to get.

We met with one mishap during the season. Well along toward December
I went to one of the bear traps that we had not been to in a number
of days. The trap was a blacksmith made one with high jaws. I found
the trap a short distance from where it had been set, tangled in an
old tree top with a bear's foot in it. The bear had been caught just
above the foot. As the trap jaws closed tight together the trap clog
had got fast solid in the brush soon after the bear had been caught.
The animal twisted and pulled until he had unjointed the foot, worn
and twisted off the skin and cords of the leg and was gone. He had
escaped some time during the night before I came to the trap.

I reset the trap and then took the trail of the bear, which had taken
a northeasterly course. I followed the trail until nearly night, when
I became satisfied that he was making for a large windfall on a
stream known as the South Fork, some fifteen miles away. I gave up
the trail and returned to camp, which I reached about 10 o'clock at
night. Bill was still keeping supper warm for me well knowing that
something was out of the ordinary and wondering what it was.

The next morning we held a council and concluded to look after a few
traps near camp and put in a day of partial rest and prepare to take
the bear's trail early the next morning. As planned the next morning,
we had our blankets and a grub stake strapped to our backs and were
off for the trail some time before daylight. Striking the bear's
trail where I had left it about 9 o'clock in the forenoon, we
followed the trail good and hard all day through wind jams and laurel
patches, coming to the big windfall just before dark, very tired.

We put up a rude shelter and camped for the night at the edge of the
windfall. In the morning as soon as it was light enough to travel
without danger of passing over the trail we were on the move. There
were several hundred acres in the windfall so we concluded to go
around and make sure that the bear was still there. Bill skirted the
jam to the left while I went to the right. Not long after daylight it
began to snow. We met on the east side of the jam about 11 o'clock
without seeing anything of the crippled bear track, though I had
crossed the trail of two bears that had gone into the jam two or
three days before.

We now concluded to go back to where the two bears had gone into the
jam and one of us stand near the trail while the other