of
powder, thirty buckshot and a wagon bolt six inches long. It was set
right in the trail and baited with a chunk of pork tied to the muzzle
and connected with the trigger by a string.

"The gun was about a mile from the house, and the very first night
after it was set, Taylor was awakened by a roar that made the windows
rattle and seemed to shake the very hills. Taylor knew the old gun had
gone off, and he chuckled as he thought of the wreck it made of the old
Grizzly. In the morning he started out to take a look at his dead
bear, and found his tracks leading from the meadow right up the trail.
He knew the sign, because the Grizzly put only the heel of his off
forefoot to the ground and there was a round mark in the track that
looked as though it were made by the end of a bone.

"As I was saying, Taylor recognized the tracks and was sure he had got
old Whitehead, but he was sort of puzzled when he noticed a hog's track
in the same trail and saw that those were sometimes wiped out by the
bear's tracks. When he got near the spring gun he saw bits of meat
hanging in the brush, but no fur anywhere. He kept on, and pretty soon
he saw a dark mass lying on the ground in front of the wreck of the old
musket. He stepped up to look at it and saw that it was the mangled
corpse of the biggest hog on the ranch. One of the hams was gone, and
apparently it had been cut away with a knife. The head and all the
fore part of the hog had been blown to flinders, and the brush was just
festooned with pork.

"Taylor thought somebody had happened along and cut a ham out of the
dead hog, but there were no man tracks anywhere; nothing but hog and
bear tracks. It was plain that the cunning old bear had driven the hog
ahead of him up the trail to spring the gun, but that missing ham could
not be accounted for.

"Another curious thing was noticed about all the cattle that the
Grizzly killed. Ordinarily, you know, the Grizzly strikes a blow that
breaks a steer's neck or shoulder, and then pulls him down and finishes
him. In the Piru country a great many cattle were found with their
throats neatly cut, and old Whitehead's tracks were invariably found
near the carcasses. The only man that the Grizzly ever killed, so far
as is known, was a Mexican sheepherder, and he was found with a slash
in the side of the head that looked like the work of a hatchet or other
sharp tool. Some people didn't believe that the Mexican was killed by
a b