t she went out of her way to seek
trouble on his behalf. And he, like all spoiled children, was the cause of
much bad feeling. She was so big and fierce that she could bully all the
other Blackbears, but when she tried to drive off old Wahb she received a
pat from his paw that sent her tumbling like a football. He followed her
up, and would have killed her, for she had broken the peace of the Park,
but she escaped by climbing a tree, from the top of which her miserable
little cub was apprehensively squealing at the pitch of his voice. So the
affair was ended; in future the Blackbear kept out of Wahb's way, and he
won the reputation of being a peaceable, well-behaved Bear. Most persons
believed that he came from some remote mountains where were neither guns
nor traps to make him sullen and revengeful.

[Illustration]

III

Every one knows that a Bitter-root Grizzly is a bad Bear. The Bitter-root
Range is the roughest part of the mountains. The ground is everywhere cut
up with deep ravines and overgrown with dense and tangled underbrush.

It is an impossible country for horses, and difficult for gunners, and
there is any amount of good Bear-pasture. So there are plenty of Bears and
plenty of trappers.

[Illustration]

The Roachbacks, as the Bitter-root Grizzlies are called, are a cunning and
desperate race. An old Roachback knows more about traps than half a dozen
ordinary trappers; he knows more about plants and roots than a whole
college of botanists. He can tell to a certainty just when and where to
find each kind of grub and worm, and he knows by a whiff whether the hunter
on his trail a mile away is working with guns, poison, dogs, traps, or all
of them together. And he has one general rule, which is an endless puzzle
to the hunter: "Whatever you decide to do, do it quickly and follow it
right up." So when a trapper and a Roachback meet, the Bear at once makes
up his mind to run away as hard as he can, or to rush at the man and fight
to a finish.

The Grizzlies of the Bad Lands did not do this: they used to stand on their
dignity and growl like a thunder-storm, and so gave the hunters a chance to
play their deadly lightning; and lightning is worse than thunder any day.
Men can get used to growls that rumble along the ground and up one's legs
to the little house where one's courage lives; but Bears cannot get used to
45-90 soft-nosed bullets, and that is why the Grizzlies of the Bad Lands
w