ere all killed off.

So the hunters have learned that they never know what a Roachback will do;
but they do know that he is going to be quick about it.

Altogether these Bitter-root Grizzlies have solved very well the problem of
life, in spite of white men, and are therefore increasing in their own wild
mountains.

Of course a range will hold only so many Bears, and the increase is crowded
out; so that when that slim young Bald-faced Roachback found he could not
hold the range he wanted, he went out perforce to seek his fortune in the
world.

[Illustration]

He was not a big Bear, or he would not have been crowded out; but he had
been trained in a good school, so that he was cunning enough to get on very
well elsewhere. How he wandered down to the Salmon River Mountains and did
not like them; how he traveled till he got among the barbwire fences of the
Snake Plains and of course could not stay there; how a mere chance turned
him from going eastward to the Park, where he might have rested; how he
made for the Snake River Mountains and found more hunters than berries; how
he crossed into the Tetons and looked down with disgust on the teeming man
colony of Jackson's Hole, does not belong to this history of Wahb. But when
Baldy Roachback crossed the Gros Ventre Range and over the Wind River
Divide to the head of the Graybull, he does come into the story, just as he
did into the country and the life of the Meteetsee Grizzly.

The Roachback had not found a man-sign since he left Jackson's Hole, and
here he was in a land of plenty of food. He feasted on all the delicacies
of the season, and enjoyed the easy, brushless country till he came on one
of Wahb's sign-posts.

"Trespassers beware!" it said in the plainest manner. The Roachback reared
up against it.

"Thunder! what a Bear!" The nose-mark was a head and neck above Baldy's
highest reach. Now, a simple Bear would have gone quietly away after this
discovery; but Baldy felt that the mountains owed him a living, and here
was a good one if he could keep out of the way of the big fellow. He nosed
about the place, kept a sharp lookout for the present owner, and went on
feeding wherever he ran across a good thing.

[Illustration]

A step or two from this ominous tree was an old pine stump. In the
Bitter-roots there are often mice-nests under such stumps, and Baldy jerked
it over to see. There was nothing. The stump rolled over against the
sign-post. Baldy had