the hole, and the slipping of his foot sprained
the ankle.

Zeke had a hard time climbing out of the prospect hole and getting back
to camp, but he got there and sent some men up to hoist the bear to the
surface. The Grizzly's weight was estimated to be 900 pounds, and it
grew every time Zeke told the story until the last time I heard it,
when it was just short of a ton.

* * * * *

Zeke's bear-killing exploits with a scatter gun may be classed with the
"important if true" information of the newspapers, but there is at
least one authentic instance of the killing of a grizzly with a charge
of bird shot.

Dr. H. W. Nelson, who was in later years a prominent surgeon of
Sacramento, practiced medicine in Placer county, Cal., in the early
fifties and was something of a sportsman. He was out quail shooting
one day with a double shotgun and was making his way up a ravine in a
narrow trail much choked with chaparral, when some men on the hill
above him shouted to him that a wounded bear was coming down the ravine
and warned him to get out of the way. The sides of the ravine were too
steep to be climbed, and the noise made by the bear breaking the brush
told him that it was too late to attempt to escape by running. So the
doctor cocked his gun, backed into the chaparral as far as he could and
hoped the bear might pass him without seeing him.

In another moment the Grizzly broke through the brush with a full head
of steam directly at the doctor, and the bear's snout was within three
feet of the muzzle of the gun when the doctor instinctively pulled both
triggers. The two charges of small shot followed the nasal passage and
caved in the front of the bear's skull, killing him instantly, but the
animal's momentum carried him forward, and he and the doctor went down
together. The doctor suffered no injury from the bear's teeth or
claws, but was bruised by the shock of the collision and the fall.

CHAPTER'XXI.

KILLED WITH A BOWIE.

The favorite weapon of the bear hunter of the old time Wild West story
book was the bowie, and doughty deeds he used to do with it in
hand-to-claw encounters with monstrous Grizzlies.

It was the fashion in those days for bears to stand erect and wrestle
catch-as-catch-can, trying to get the under-hold and hug the hunter to
death, and the hunter invariably stepped in and plunged his bowie to
the hilt in the heart of his foe. But the breed of Grizzly that hugged