companion for cowardice in abandoning his charge, said that
he was not going to let bears "eat up his sheeps" in daylight, and
rushed towards the bears, shouting and setting his dog on them. The
frightened cubs climbed a tree, but the mother ran to meet the shepherd
and seemed anxious to fight. Antone stood astonished for a moment,
eyeing the oncoming bear, then turned and fled, closely pursued. Unable
to reach a suitable tree for climbing, he ran to the camp and scrambled
up to the roof of the little cabin; the bear followed, but did not climb
to the roof,--only stood glaring up at him for a few minutes,
threatening him and holding him in mortal terror, then went to her cubs,
called them down, went to the flock, caught a sheep for supper, and
vanished in the brush. As soon as the bear left the cabin, the trembling
Antone begged Joe to show him a good safe tree, up which he climbed like
a sailor climbing a mast, and remained as long as he could hold on, the
tree being almost branchless. After these disastrous experiences the two
shepherds chopped and gathered large piles of dry wood and made a ring
of fire around the corral every night, while one with a gun kept watch
from a comfortable stage built on a neighboring pine that commanded a
view of the corral. This evening the show made by the circle of fire was
very fine, bringing out the surrounding trees in most impressive relief,
and making the thousands of sheep eyes glow like a glorious bed of
diamonds.

_August 14._ Up to the time I went to bed last night all was quiet,
though we expected the shaggy freebooters every minute. They did not
come till near midnight, when a pair walked boldly to the corral between
two of the great fires, climbed in, killed two sheep and smothered ten,
while the frightened watcher in the tree did not fire a single shot,
saying that he was afraid he might kill some of the sheep, for the bears
got into the corral before he got a good clear view of them. I told the
shepherds they should at once move the flock to another camp. "Oh, no
use, no use," they lamented; "where we go, the bears go too. See my poor
dead sheeps--soon all dead. No use try another camp. We go down to the
plains." And as I afterwards learned, they were driven out of the
mountains a month before the usual time. Were bears much more numerous
and destructive, the sheep would be kept away altogether.

It seems strange that bears, so fond of all sorts of flesh, running the
ri