d, making no sound, but the thick spatter of blood splashes, showing
clear on the white snow, betrayed the mortal nature of the wound. For
some minutes I followed the trail; and then, topping a ridge, I saw
the dark bulk lying motionless in a snow drift at the foot of a low
rock-wall, from which he had tumbled.

The usual practice of the still-hunter who is after grisly is to toll
it to baits. The hunter either lies in ambush near the carcass, or
approaches it stealthily when he thinks the bear is at its meal.

One day while camped near the Bitter Root Mountains in Montana I found
that a bear had been feeding on the carcass of a moose which lay some
five miles from the little open glade in which my tent was pitched, and
I made up my mind to try to get a shot at it that afternoon. I stayed
in camp till about three o'clock, lying lazily back on the bed of
sweet-smelling evergreen boughs, watching the pack ponies as they stood
under the pines on the edge of the open, stamping now and then, and
switching their tails. The air was still, the sky a glorious blue; at
that hour in the afternoon even the September sun was hot. The smoke
from the smouldering logs of the camp fire curled thinly upwards. Little
chipmunks scuttled out from their holes to the packs, which lay in a
heap on the ground, and then scuttled madly back again. A couple of
drab-colored whisky-jacks, with bold mien and fearless bright eyes,
hopped and fluttered round, picking up the scraps, and uttering an
extraordinary variety of notes, mostly discordant; so tame were they
that one of them lit on my outstretched arm as I half dozed, basking in
the sunshine.

When the shadows began to lengthen, I shouldered my rifle and plunged
into the woods. At first my route lay along a mountain side; then
for half a mile over a windfall, the dead timber piled about in crazy
confusion. After that I went up the bottom of a valley by a little
brook, the ground being carpeted with a sponge of soaked moss. At the
head of this brook was a pond covered with water-lilies; and a scramble
through a rocky pass took me into a high, wet valley, where the thick
growth of spruce was broken by occasional strips of meadow. In this
valley the moose carcass lay, well at the upper end.

In moccasined feet I trod softly through the soundless woods. Under the
dark branches it was already dusk, and the air had the cool chill
of evening. As I neared the clump where the body lay, I walked with