offered for the Grizzly's scalp and the
herders were instructed to notify the Harris boys at San Emigdio
whenever the bear raided their flocks.

Here is where Gleason's part of the story begins. The bear attacked a
band of sheep one afternoon, killed four and stampeded the Mexican
herder, who ran down the mountain to the camp of the Harris boys, good
hunters who had been engaged by the majordomo to do up Old Pinto. Two
of the Harris boys and another man went up to the scene of the raid,
carrying their rifles, blankets and some boards with which to construct
a platform. They selected a pine tree and built a platform across the
lower limbs about twenty feet from the ground. When the platform was
nearly completed, two of the men left the tree and went to where they
had dropped their blankets and guns, about a hundred yards away. One
picked up the blankets and the other took the three rifles and started
back toward the tree, where the third man was still tinkering the
platform.

The sun had set, but it was still twilight, and none of the party
dreamed of seeing the bear at that time, but within forty yards of the
tree sat Old Pinto, his head cocked to one side, watching the man in
the tree with much evident interest. Pinto had returned to his
muttons, but found the proceedings of the man up the tree so
interesting that he was letting his supper wait.

[Illustration: Watching the Man in the Tree.]

The man carrying the blankets dropped them and seized a heavy express
rifle that some Englishman had left in the country. The other man
dropped the extra gun and swung a Winchester 45-70 to his shoulder.
The express cracked first, and the hollow-pointed ball struck Pinto
under the shoulder. The 45-70 bullet struck a little lower and made
havoc of the bear's liver. The shock knocked the bear off his pins,
but he recovered and ran into a thicket of scrub oak. The thicket was
impenetrable to a man, and there was no man present who wanted to
penetrate it in the wake of a wounded Grizzly.

The hunters returned to their camp, and early next morning they came
back up the mountain with three experienced and judicious dogs. They
had hunted bears enough to know that Pinto would be very sore and
ill-tempered by that time, and being men of discretion as well as
valor, they had no notion of trying to follow the dogs through the
scrub oak brush. Amateur hunters might have sent the dogs into the
brush and remained on the edge o