redoubled caution, watching and listening with strained alertness. Then
I heard a twig snap; and my blood leaped, for I knew the bear was at his
supper. In another moment I saw his shaggy, brown form. He was working
with all his awkward giant strength, trying to bury the carcass,
twisting it to one side and the other with wonderful ease. Once he
got angry and suddenly gave it a tremendous cuff with his paw; in his
bearing he had something half humorous, half devilish. I crept up within
forty yards; but for several minutes he would not keep his head still.
Then something attracted his attention in the forest, and he stood
motionless looking towards it, broadside to me, with his fore-paws
planted on the carcass. This gave me my chance. I drew a very fine bead
between his eye and ear; and pulled trigger. He dropped like a steer
when struck with a pole-axe.

If there is a good hiding-place handy it is better to lie in wait at the
carcass. One day on the head-waters of the Madison, I found that a
bear was coming to an elk I had shot some days before; and I at once
determined to ambush the beast when he came back that evening. The
carcass lay in the middle of a valley a quarter of a mile broad. The
bottom of this valley was covered by an open forest of tall pines; a
thick jungle of smaller evergreens marked where the mountains rose
on either hand. There were a number of large rocks scattered here and
there, one, of very convenient shape, being only some seventy or eighty
yards from the carcass. Up this I clambered. It hid me perfectly, and
on its top was a carpet of soft pine needles, on which I could lie at my
ease.

Hour after hour passed by. A little black woodpecker with a yellow crest
ran nimbly up and down the tree-trunks for some time and then flitted
away with a party of chickadees and nut-hatches. Occasionally a Clarke's
crow soared about overhead or clung in any position to the swaying end
of a pine branch, chattering and screaming. Flocks of cross-bills, with
wavy flight and plaintive calls, flew to a small mineral lick near by,
where they scraped the clay with their queer little beaks.

As the westering sun sank out of sight beyond the mountains these sounds
of bird-life gradually died away. Under the great pines the evening was
still with the silence of primeval desolation. The sense of sadness and
loneliness, the melancholy of the wilderness, came over me like a spell.
Every slight noise made my pulses throb a