The winter of 1889-90 is memorable in California as the winter of "the big snow." In the latter part of January the Central Pacific line over the Sierra Nevada was blockaded, and three or four pa.s.senger trains were imprisoned in the drifts for more than two weeks. Pa.s.sing through the blockade and over the range afoot, I walked at times above the tops of the telegraph poles, and think it no exaggeration to estimate the depth of snow at the higher alt.i.tudes at 25 feet. Drifts in the canyons must have been more than double the depth of the snow on a level. The storm was general and the snowfall throughout the mountain region was extraordinary, not only for quant.i.ty but for rapidity. It can snow more inches to the hour in the high Sierra than feet to the week anywhere else, and the big storm of 1890 broke all previous records.

Miners' cabins in the gulches and hunters' shacks on the mountains were buried in a night and the occupants had to tunnel their way out. Deer fled from the slopes down into secluded glens which had been their safe refuge from Sierra storms before, but the white death followed them and softly folded its feathery wings about them. In the spring the dead deer were found in hundreds where they had "yarded" safely through many winters before the big snow. Warm weather before the storm had brought the bears out of their holes and set them to foraging for grub. The snow fell lightly and no crust formed for some time, and bruin could not wallow through it. The best he could do was to get under the lee of a log or ledge, take another nap and nurse his inconvenient appet.i.te. Being a philosopher, bruin did the best he could and trusted the G.o.d of the wild things to do the rest.

Upon the long western slope of a big sprawling mountain in Sierra county a Grizzly dam and two gaunt cubs of the vintage of '89 were caught in the big snow miles away from the deep gulch in which they had pa.s.sed the winter. No doubt that dam was weatherwise enough to sense the coming storm in time to have returned to the den, but neither beast nor man could have guessed what a thick blanket of white the gray clouds were about to lay upon the land. When the flakes began to fall thickly Mother Grizzly quit digging roots and turning over rocks, and sought shelter. The long slope was smooth and bare, but down near the foot was a fallen pine with upturned roots, and into the hollow where the roots had been, under the lee of the matted ma.s.s of fibre and dirt, Mother Grizzly led her babies and there made her bed for the night. It was a longer night than the old bear expected. It lasted until the next day's westering sun made a pale, bluish glimmer through the upper part of the drift that covered the fallen tree and filled up the hollow. The warmth of their bodies had kept an open s.p.a.ce around the bears, and the upturned roots of the pine had prevented the snow from piling high directly over them, while causing it to drift and form an enclosing barrier in front of the shallow pit made by the uprooting of the tree. Mother Grizzly arose and struggled toward the dim glimmer of light, but she could not break her way out. The snow was light and dry and would not pack, and her buffetings only brought a feathery smother down upon her and the cubs. All she accomplished was to let down the frail roofing of the den and get a glimpse of the sky. She tried to climb up the drift, but sank out of sight and had to back out of the smother. Digging was futile, for the snow offered scarcely more resistance than foam.

So Mother Grizzly gave up her attempt to escape and busied herself with making the hollow as comfortable as possible for a long stay. She sc.r.a.ped down to the dirt and packed the snow about the sides of the lair, stowed the cubs against the back of the den and curled herself in front of them and waited for better times to come.

It is a proverb of the Spaniards that "who sleeps, dines," and bears attest its truth, for it is their experience through the long, cold weeks of winter, when the snow is deep and no food is to be got at.

Doubtless the old she bear was content to go to sleep again and forget her hunger, but it may be supposed that the cubs had not learned the philosophy of necessity, and kept her awake with fretful demands which she could not satisfy. Had the family remained holed up in the winter den and not been tempted out by mild weather to break the long fast, probably the desire for food would have remained dormant, but the taste of food awakened appet.i.te, and exercise sharpened it and created insistent necessity for its satisfaction. The normal period of hibernation having pa.s.sed, dreams were no longer acceptable subst.i.tutes for dinner. So the hungry, worrying cubs would not let their dam sleep, and she soon became as ravenous as they and impatient of imprisonment.

Every day Mother Grizzly tried the barrier to find a way out, but for more than two weeks the snow was without a crust that would sustain the weight of a dog, and she could only flounder into the drift a few feet and struggle out again. Then a light drizzle of rain came, and the next night there was a sharper tingle in the air, a promise of cold weather, and crust began to form. In a day or two more it would be firm enough to travel upon, and the old Grizzly would lead her starving cubs down into the foothills and hunt for a stray calf or a sheep with which to feed them.

The big snow obliterated mountain roads and trails, and the mail was carried to many of the smaller mountain settlements by men on snowshoes, who took the shortest feasible routes and found smooth traveling a dozen or fifteen feet above the rough, rock-strewn ground.

A Sierra carrier on skis--the long, wooden Norwegian snowshoes--with a letter pouch strapped to his shoulders, was tempted by the light crust to leave the ridge and shorten his journey by making a cut-off down the long, smooth slope. A minute's swift rush down that slope would save hours of weary plodding above the heads of the gulches.

The carrier studied the stretch of gleaming white carefully to select his course, and determined on a line pa.s.sing a little below the roots of the fallen pine, which were indicated by a slight fold in the blanket of snow. Setting his steel-shod staff under his left arm pit to serve as brake and rudder and throwing his weight upon it, the carrier ranged his skis parallel, the right in advance a few inches, fixed his attention upon the range mark he had chosen, gave a slight push with the staff and got under way. The crust bore his weight easily, and in two seconds he was gliding swiftly. In five seconds more he was speeding like an arrow from the bow, and the ringing of the steel staff point against the crust arose in a high clear note above the grating sound of the sliding skis.

Mother Grizzly heard the strange sound, which was unlike anything of which she knew the meaning, and cuffing the whining cubs into instant silence, she started cautiously up the barrier to see what was going on or what danger menaced. Her frequent attempts to get out of the hole had made an inclined trench, which came to the surface a few yards from the protruding tree roots, and when she reached the upper end and put her head above the crust she saw a man rushing down the mountain straight toward her with the speed of a falling stone.

The green glint came into the grizzly's eyes, her teeth clashed together in quick, sharp strokes, like the chattering of a chilled bather, and she lunged forward and upward to meet the charge. If the man saw her at all, it was too late to swerve from his course or swing his staff forward for a weapon. His right ski pa.s.sed under the bear's foreleg and he flew headlong over her, hurtled through the air and crashed through the snow crust a dozen yards beyond her. One of the skis was broken and torn from his foot, and even if his leg had not been broken he would have been helpless where he fell.

[Ill.u.s.tration: She Lunged Forward to Meet the Charge.]

Mother Grizzly and the starving cubs broke their fast, and two or three days later they went away over the frozen snow to the foothills. The men who went out in search of the missing carrier, and followed his trail to the fallen pine, brought back the mail pouch and something in a grain sack. They told me what they found, but it was not a pleasing tale and it is best that it be not retold.

CHAPTER IX.

BOSTON'S BIG BEAR FIGHT.

A small party of hunters sat by a campfire in a tamarack grove in the high Sierra. Their guide was William Larkin, Esq., alias "Old Bill," a man who had lived in the mountains for forty years and learned many things worth telling about. A new Winchester rifle that was being cleaned was the immediate provocation of some reminiscent remarks on the subject of pump-guns.

"We old mossbacks are slow to see anything good in new contraptions,"

said Mr. Larkin, after begging a Turkish cigarette from the Dude and lighting it with the Dude's patent pocket lamp, "but I'm just beginning to get it socked home into my feeble old intellect that things ain't naturally no account just because I never seen 'em afore. I stuck to it for a good many years that an old muzzle-loading rifle was the best shooting tool that ever was or ever could be made, but an old she-bear with one of my bullets through her lungs taught me different by clawing all the clothes and half the meat off my back. I'm learning' slowly, and I ain't too old to learn some more. If I live long enough I'll know consid'able yit.

"I remember the first pump-gun that came into these mountains. It was a Henry sixteen-shooter, and it blew in along with a kid from Boston who wanted to kill a bear. The young chap's uncle tried to convince him that killing a California Grizzly was not as much fun as some folks pretended, but the Boston boy couldn't be convinced, and so the uncle hired me to go along and take care of him. Boston had a gun in a case, and I told him to keep it there until we got to my bear pasture. The rest of his outfit was 500 cartridges and a box of paper collars.

"When we got into camp over on the South Fork, Boston wanted to begin the slaughter right away and opened up that gun case. I'd heard of the repeating rifle, but had it put up for a Yankee lie, and when the boy pulled out the gun I thought he had made a mistake and brought along some scientific contrivance from his college. He told me it was a Henry rifle and showed me how it worked, but I had no use for it.

While he stuffed his pump-gun I smoked and thought. 'Unless you go slow, Mr. Larkin,' says I to myself, 'you'll get into plenty of trouble. Here you are, mixed up with something that you don't sabe pretty well. A rough canyon, two hound dogs and an able-bodied bear is a combination that you can work, but when you throw in a college boy and a gun that winds up like a clock and shoots till the cows come home, the situation looks kind of misty.' I didn't think much of the pump-gun, but for all I knew it might go off at both ends and paw up everything by the roots, and I was tolerable sure that Boston would wobble it around so's to take in a pretty consid'able scope of outdoors. But I allowed I was old fashioned enough to circ.u.mvent a Boston boy and his new gun, and concluded to go ahead.

"Next morning we put the dogs into Devil's Gulch, and by making a cut over a spur we got about two miles below them and sat down to wait for bear. The trees were so tall and so close together that you couldn't see the tops and the sun never saw the ground. The canyon was narrow and the sides were so steep that they tucked under at the bottom.

While we sat there I figured a bit on what was going to happen. There was a light breeze, and presently I noticed something on the other side of the canyon, about fifty yards away. The wind swayed some bushes that grew around a charred stump, and from time to time the black end of the stump showed up and then disappeared very much like a bear's head peeping out of the brush.

"Pretty soon the dogs made a row up the gulch, and as the howls and yells and promiscuous uproar came nearer I knew they had started a bear and made him get a wiggle on. Boston danced around in great excitement, and when I pointed to the black stump he was ready to see bears most anywhere. 'You take care of that,' says I, 'and I'll go and see what ails the dogs.' He opened fire on the stump, and I dodged from tree to tree up the gulch until I was out of range.

"I never was in a battle, but if they made any more noise at Bull Run than Boston was making, I'm glad I wasn't there. I thought I was running away from the biggest fight on record. It was what our military authors call 'a continual roll of musketry.' But while running away from one battle I piled into another and had all the fight I needed on my hands. The dogs and two bears were mixed up in some sort of disagreement about things in general, and I was in it, as the Dude would say, with both feet and a crutch. We got some tangled, but things came my way pretty soon, and when the bears were laid out I stopped to listen. The fight was still going on down the canyon. The boy is still holding his own, I thought; it would be a pity to spoil such a battle. So I went on and dressed my bears, while the steady roll of musketry thundered in the gulch. Then I had a wash in the creek, had a smoke and sat down at the foot of a tree and fell asleep.

The last I heard was a monotonous uproar indicating that the forces down the gulch were stubbornly holding their ground.

"I never did know how long I slept, but when I awoke all was quiet.

Perhaps it was the silence following the cessation of hostilities that awakened me. I set out to find Boston, and groped my way down the gulch through a cloud of smoke. Presently I came to the scene of the fray. Where my hero had made his first and last stand was a stack of empty sh.e.l.ls and the pump-gun so hot that it had set the dry leaves afire, but the bear hunter was gone. I yelled, but got no answer. I looked for tracks up and down the canyon, but there were no tracks.

The kid had vanished.

"Then I climbed up the side of the canyon, high enough to see the tops of trees that stood in the bottom of the gulch. Near the scene of hostilities was a giant sugar pine, the top of which had been broken off. Boston had shinned up that tree when his ammunition gave out, and when I discovered him he was balancing himself upon the broken shaft and reaching out over his head into s.p.a.ce for more limbs."

CHAPTER X.

YOSEMITE.

"Yosemite" is an Indian word, signifying "place of the Grizzly bear,"

and appropriately the Yosemite National Park is made a sanctuary for the California Grizzly by the regulations forbidding hunting or the carrying of firearms within its borders. Danger of extinction of the species, which was an imminent menace when the park was established, was averted by that act, and doubtless the bears have increased in numbers under protection of the United States. They were quite plentiful in that part of the Sierra Nevada in the early 90's, when, as State Forester, I co-operated with the first superintendent of the National Park, Capt. Wood, Fourth U. S. Cavalry, in driving out the sheep-men with their devastating flocks of "hoofed locusts," and protecting the Sierra forests from fire.

During the first two or three years of the Park's legal existence the hunting of deer was prohibited, but bear-hunting was permitted, and Captain Wood, Lieut. Davis and I devoted considerable time to the sport in the autumn of 1891. The Captain and I learned to appreciate the distinction between bear-hunting and bear-killing very keenly during that season. For example, I cut the trails of no less than thirteen bears in two days in the mountains north of Yosemite Valley and followed some of them, but although I succeeded in getting close enough to hustle two of the wanderers out of a leisurely walk into a lope, I never saw hair through my rifle sight. Having no dogs, of course, it was all still-hunting and trailing, with the long-odds chance of jumping a bear in the brush by sheer accident.

Late in the tourist season, bears came down out of the high mountains into the Yosemite Valley and made tracks in the Bridal Veil Meadows and along the stage roads, which were pointed out to visitors for their entertainment. The valley butcher reported bear sign at the place where he slaughtered beef for the hotel, and I tried roosting for bear in hope that it might prove better than still-hunting. There was a platform in a tree at the slaughtering place and I sat there through one chilly night without hearing or seeing any bear sign. The next night an eager tourist persuaded me to give him a share of the perch, and we roosted silently and patiently until after midnight. Hearing a bear coming through the brush, I touched my companion gently to attract his attention. He had fallen into a doze, and, awakening with a start at my touch he dropped his shotgun from the platform. The stock was broken, one of the hammers struck upon a log and a load of buckshot went whistling through the leaves of our tree. Then we went home. It was an accident; the man meant well, and he was very sorry, and I held my tongue.

The next afternoon I was one of a small party on a drive over the roads at the lower end of the valley, and of course had no gun, A bear broke out of the brush, crossed the road fifty yards ahead of the team, and went down to the meadow. It was not expedient to say all that occurred to me before comparative strangers; so I jumped from the buckboard, picked up a cudgel and lit out after that bear on a lope. He had a good start and when he discovered that he was being followed he clawed dirt to increase his lead and beat me out to the bank of the Merced.

For a moment he hesitated about going into the swift water, but he decided that he would rather swim than listen to offensive personalities, and over the bank he plunged.

It was a relief to sit there, watching him swim the rapids, and feel free to say all the things I hadn't said to the man who dropped the gun, with a few general observations on the perversity of bears and bear-hunters' luck thrown in for good measure.

Bears were all over the place that year. They blundered into the roads at night and scared teams, broke into the cabin in Mariposa Grove and ate up all the grub and a sack of sugar pine seed worth a dollar a pound, and Captain Wood and I never got a shot in three weeks' of diligent hunting. The only man who had any luck was Lieutenant Davis; that is, not counting Private McNamara, who had bigger luck than a man who wounds a big Grizzly and runs really has coming to him. McNamara's luck will be seen later.

Davis killed two bears on the Perigord Meadows and one on Rush Creek, and wounded a large Grizzly in Devil's Gulch. It was a lucky shot that he made in the dark on Rush Creek. A troop horse had died about a quarter of a mile below the cavalry camp, on the edge of the National Park, and the men had seen bear tracks around the carca.s.s. Davis and an Illinois preacher, who was roughing it for his health with the troopers, took their blankets one night and camped about thirty yards from the dead horse to await the coming of the bear. The moon was not due to rise until about midnight, and Davis pulled off his boots, rolled up in his blanket and went to sleep. The preacher was not sleepy, and was not entirely confident that it was bear nature to wait for moonlight before starting out on the prowl. So he made a small fire and sat beside it, toasting his toes and thinking of things.

Just before midnight Davis awoke, looked at his watch, and said: "Well, parson, it is about time for the moon to show up, and the bear is likely to come pretty soon. You'd better put out your fire."

The preacher shoved some dirt over the embers with his foot, and Davis had just returned his watch to his pocket, when the sound of the crunching of gravel was heard from the bank just above the carca.s.s.

Davis looked up and could just make out a huge dark form on the edge of the bank. He raised his carbine and fired point blank at the dark ma.s.s, and the report was answered by an angry growl. The bear leaped down the bank toward the hunters, and Davis sprang to his feet, dropping the carbine, and jumped into the creek, revolver in hand, to get into clear fighting ground. In doing so, he had to jump toward the bear, but he preferred close quarters in the creek bed, where the water was knee deep, to a scrimmage in the brush.

The preacher ran for his carbine, which was leaning against a tree twenty feet distant, but he had no opportunity to use it, for the bear made but one more plunge and fell into the water with the death gurgle in his throat. When Davis was certain that the bear was done for, he and the preacher ventured to examine the beast. They found that Davis had made one of the luckiest shots on record, having sent a carbine bullet through the heart of the big cinnamon bear, although he had taken no aim, and, when he fired, could not distinguish the bear's head from his tail.

They pulled the dead bear out of the water, and by the light of the moon, which had risen over the mountain, the preacher curiously examined the teeth and formidable claws of the first wild bear he had ever seen. He felt of the animal's enormous, muscular legs, and was profoundly impressed with the great strength of the brute.

"Well," said Davis, after he had inspected the body sufficiently, "we might as well turn in and sleep the rest of the night. The trail back to camp is too rough to follow in the night." And so saying he rolled up in his blankets.

"Sleep!" said the preacher; "sleep with those dum things wandering about! Not much." And the preacher rebuilt his fire, climbed upon a log, and roosted there, with c.o.c.ked carbine, until daybreak, while the Lieutenant slept and snored.

The "other story" is about Private McNamara, a Grizzly, and some gray squirrels. McNamara got leave to go hunting, and went over to Devil's Gulch, the roughest canyon in the country and the best hiding place for big game. McNamara had good luck, and killed about a dozen gray squirrels, which he slung to his belt. He had turned homeward, and was picking his way through the fallen timber, when a Grizzly arose from behind a log about fifty yards away. McNamara raised his carbine and fired. The bear howled and started for him, and McNamara felt in his belt for another cartridge, but none was there. He had fired his last shot.

McNamara realized that he had to trust to his legs to get him out of that sc.r.a.pe, and he turned and ran faster than he ever sprinted in his life. But the bear was the better runner, and gained rapidly. The dangling squirrels impeded McNamara's action, and as he ran he tried to get rid of them. He pulled two loose and dropped them, and the Grizzly stopped to investigate. Bruin found them good, and he ate them in two gulps and resumed the chase.

McNamara dropped some more squirrels and gained a good lead, and then he unhooked his belt and dropped all that were left, and when the Grizzly finished the lot McNamara was out of sight across the river and getting his second wind for a long run home.