Then the vindictive and resolute
beast came back to the tree and again reared up against it; this time
to receive a bullet that dropped her lifeless. Mr. Whitney then climbed
down and walked to where the cub had been sitting as a looker-on.
The little animal did not move until he reached out his hand; when it
suddenly struck at him like an angry cat, dove into the bushes, and was
seen no more.
In the summer of 1888 an old-time trapper, named Charley Norton, while
on Loon Creek, of the middle fork of the Salmon, meddled with a she and
her cubs. She ran at him and with one blow of her paw almost knocked off
his lower jaw; yet he recovered, and was alive when I last heard of him.
Yet the very next spring the cowboys with my own wagon on the Little
Missouri round-up killed a mother bear which made but little more fight
than a coyote. She had two cubs, and was surprised in the early morning
on the prairie far from cover. There were eight or ten cowboys together
at the time, just starting off on a long circle, and of course they
all got down their ropes in a second, and putting spurs to their fiery
little horses started toward the bears at a run, shouting and swinging
their loops round their heads.
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