them
had found fresh bear tracks--he thought of a medium-sized black
bear--leading up to the scattered, bleached bones of a cow. Tracks
about the skull indicated that the bear had rolled it about, much as a
puppy worries a bone. One day the trapper found the skull hidden in
some juniper bushes, and reasoned that the bear returned from day to
day, played with it, then hid it away. So he returned to camp, got a
trap and set it by the beast's toy.

I was eager to learn the outcome of this action, so I gratefully
accepted the trappers' invitation to stay over with them. Next day, I
went along when they visited the trap. To our astonishment, the skull
was gone and the trap still set.

It was easy to trace the culprit for his tracks revealed that his left
front foot was badly twisted, its track pointing in, almost at right
angles, to the tracks of the other three feet, with the clawmarks
almost touching the track of the right front foot. We followed his
trail till we came to a sandy stretch upon which that bear had held
high carnival. He had rolled the skull about, punted it with his good
right paw, and leaped upon it, in mimic attack, as though it were a fat
marmot. Then, playtime over, he had carried it a considerable distance
and cached it beneath some logs.

The trapper returned to camp for another trap, and set it and the first
near the skull, concealing the traps cleverly in depressions scooped
out in the sand, and covering their gaping, toothed jaws with loose,
pine needles. Then he scattered a few pine cones about, and placed
dead tree limbs near the traps in such a way that in stepping over them
the bear would be liable to step squarely upon the concealed pan of one
of them.

Three times the bear rescued the precious cow skull, each time avoiding
the traps. At last in desperation, the trapper took two more traps to
the gulch and vowed that he'd pull up stakes and leave the bear alone
if he did not get him with the set he purposed making.

With boyish interest, I accompanied him to the gulch, carrying one of
the traps for him. We left the traps a short distance from where the
bear had concealed the old skull, while the trapper looked the ground
over and decided to set the traps where the skull was hidden, for the
spot was ideal for the purpose. On two sides logs formed a barrier and
beyond them was a huge bowlder, the two forming a natural little cove.
He expected the bear to approach his plaything f