True Bear Stories Part 11

"Are there any true grizzly bears in California?"

"Undoubtedly there are."

"I don't know about it. I have a great deal of doubt. Where are they?"

"In the Sierra Madre, in Touloumne Canyon, in Siskiyou County and probably in many other mountain districts."

"That may be so, but n.o.body can find them. Now, do you think you could find them?"

"I think I could if I should try."

"Would you undertake to get a genuine grizzly in this State?"

"Yes, if you want one. How will you have him--dead or alive?"

"Alive."

This conversation was held last May between the proprietor of the Examiner and special reporter Allen Kelly.

A week ago Kelly brought home an enormous grizzly bear, lodged the animal temporarily in one of the cages in Woodward's Gardens and reported to the editor that he had finished that a.s.signment.

The following is his account of the hunt and capture.

The Examiner expedition began the search for a grizzly early in June, starting from Santa Paula and striking into the mountains at Tar Creek, where the Sespe oil wells are bored. The Examiner correspondent detailed to catch a bear was accompanied by De Moss Bowers of Ventura, who was moved by love of adventure to offer his a.s.sistance.

During the first part of the trip the party numbered five persons, including Dad Coffman, a spry old gentleman of seventy-two years, who was out for the benefit of his health, a packer and guide, and a person from Santa Paula called "Doc," who was loaded to the muzzle with misinformation and inspired with the notion that it was legitimate to plunder the expedition because the Examiner had plenty of money. The packer was "Doc's" son, a good man to work, but unfortunately afflicted with similar hallucinations. The expedition was plundered because these persons were trusted on the recommendation of a gentleman who ought to have known better.

At Tar Creek the correspondent was told that the Stone Corral bear, a somewhat noted grizzly that had killed his man, had been recently on Squaw Flat, and had prowled about an old cabin at night, sorting over the garbage heap and pile of tin cans at the door, but when the expedition pa.s.sed the cabin no fresh sign was found, and the tracks on Squaw Flat were at least a week old.

The first camp was in a clump of chincapin brush at Stone Corral.

There were bear tracks in the soft ground at the edge of the creek, which induced the hunters to spend two days in prospecting that part of the country. One of the proposed plans for capturing the bear was to run him out of the rocks and brush to some reasonably open bit of country like Squaw Flat or one of the small level patches near camp and la.s.so him, but the impracticable nature of that scheme was soon demonstrated. On the next day after making camp the Examiner's own bear catcher went out on a nervous black horse called "Nig" to find out where the Stone Corral bear was spending the summer and incidentally to get some venison. The Stone Corral bear was there or thereabouts beyond any doubt. He ran the correspondent out of the brush and showed a perverse disposition to do all the hunting himself.

"Nig" would not stand to let his rider take a shot, but when the bear gave notice of his presence by growling and smashing down the brush twenty yards away, he wheeled and bolted towards camp. Near the camp Dad was found rounding up the other horses, who had just been scared from their pasturage by another wandering bear. It was clear that not a horse in the outfit could be ridden to within roping distance of a bear, and it is doubtful if three horses fit for such a job could be found in the country. Some years ago the ranchmen and vaqueros frequently caught bears with a rope, but even then it was difficult to train horses to the work, and only one horse out of a hundred could be cured of his instinctive dread of a grizzly.

It was clear also that there were some defects in the plan of driving the Stone Corral bear out of the brush, chief of which was the bear's inconsiderate desire to do the driving himself. As the hunting would have to be done afoot, the prospects incident to an attempt to round up a big grizzly among the rocks and chaparral were not peculiarly alluring. Trapping was the only other method that could be suggested, but the absence of any heavy timber would make that difficult.

The Stone Corral is a singular arrangement of huge sandstone ledges on the slope of a mountain, forming a rough inclosure about a quarter of a mile wide and three or four times as long. The country is very rugged and broken for miles around, and except along the creek and on the trail a horse cannot be ridden through it. The problem of how to catch a bear in such a place was not solved, because the bear cut short its consideration by marching past the camp and lumbering down the creek bed toward the Alder Creek Canyon and the Sespe country. The correspondent stood upon the sandstone ledge as he went by, and yelled at him, but he did not quicken his pace.

When it became evident that the bear was bound for the Sespe, the horses were saddled. Balaam the Burro was concealed under a mountainous pack, and the march was resumed over the Alder Creek trail to the deep gorge through which the Sespe River runs. The man who made the Alder Creek trail was not born to build roads. He laid it out right over the top of a high and steep mountain, when by making a slight detour, he could have avoided a difficult and unnecessary climb. In the broiling hot sun of a breezeless day in June, the march over the mountains was hard on men and horses, and the pace was necessarily slow.

The heat coaxed the rattlesnakes out of their holes, and the angry hum of their rattles was an almost incessant accompaniment to the hoof beats of the horses. Where the trail wound along a steep slope, affording but slight foothold for an animal, a more than unusually strenuous and insistent singing of a snake, disturbed from his sunny siesta, caused Balaam to jump aside. Balaam avoided the snake, but he lost his balance and rolled down the slope, heels in the air and pack underneath. The acrobatic feats achieved by Balaam in his struggles to regain his footing were watched by an admiring and solicitous audience, and when he cleverly took advantage of the slight obstruction offered by a manzanita bush, and got safely upon his feet, he was loudly applauded. The deep solicitude of the party for the safety of Balaam and his pack was accounted for when he scrambled back to the trail and gravely walked up to the packer to have his pack straightened. Every man anxiously felt of the pack, and heaved a sigh of relief. The bottles containing O. P. S., antidote for snake bite, were not broken, but it was a narrow escape.

"Great Beeswax!" said the Doctor, "suppose those bottles had been smashed and then some one of us should go to work and bite himself with a snake! Wouldn't that be a fix?"

"Dogdurn if it don't make my blood run cold to think of it," said Dad.

Everybody's blood seemed to be congealing, and as the pack was loose and the antidote accessible, an ounce of prevention was administered to each man, and Balaam was rewarded for his timely agility with a handful of sugar.

No more accidents occurred, and late in the afternoon the cavalcade slid, coasted and scrambled down the last steep hill into the Sespe Canyon, where a camp was made under an immense oak beside a deep, rocky pool. That evening, around the camp-fire, some strange bear stories were evolved from either the memories or imagination of the hunters.

In the morning the search for bear signs was resumed and prosecuted until noon without success. Dad was lured by the swarms of trout in the stream, and went fishing. Dad is not a scientific fly fisherman.

His favorite method is to select a shady nook on the bank, sit down with his back against a rock, tie a sinker to a large and gaudy fly, and angle on the bottom for the biggest trout he can see. He generally carries a book in his pocket, and when the trout remains unresponsive to the allurements of the gaudy fly, he fastens his rod to a bush and reads until he falls asleep.

In the afternoon one of the party went out over a long, brushy ridge, and the correspondent pushed on down the gorge in search of bear signs. All the bear tracks led up toward the Hot Springs Canyon, indicating that the grizzlies had begun their annual migration to the Alamo, Frazier and Pine mountains, where large bands of sheep are herded through the summer. Some of the tracks were large and fresh, and a person might come upon a bear at any time in the bottom of the canyon. Preparations were made for following the bears and directions given for an early start in the morning. The Doctor recollected that he had important business in Santa Paula that required his immediate attention, and he wouldn't have time to follow the grizzlies through the rugged pa.s.ses of the mountains. Accordingly, he and Dad decided to remain in the Sespe camp a day or two, enjoy the fishing, and then return to Santa Paula, and the bear hunting party that saddled up and struck out on the trail of the grizzly in the morning was reduced to three.

The trail led through the Hot Springs Canyon, where boiling hot sulphur water flows out of the ground in a stream large enough to sensibly affect the temperature of the Sespe River, into which it runs. This canyon was formerly a beautiful camping spot, and was resorted to by many persons who believed that bathing in sulphur water would restore their health, but about three years ago a cloudburst uprooted all the trees and converted the green cienaga into a rocky desolate flat, as barren and unattractive as the sharp, treeless peaks surrounding the canyon. A few mountain sheep inhabit the mountains about the Hot Springs, and occasionally one is seen standing upon some high and inaccessible cliff, but it is very seldom that a hunter succeeds in getting a pair of big horns.

The next camp was on the Piru Creek, where it runs through the Mutaw ranch. One of the most promising mining districts in this part of the State takes its name from the Piru, and in years gone by a great deal of gold was taken from the diggings along the stream. One of the most successful miners was Mike Brannan, whose cabins and mining appliances lie unused and decaying about six miles from the place where the expedition camped.

From the camp on the Mutaw the expedition followed Piru Creek down to Lockwood, and the latter up to the divide between Lockwood Valley and the Cuddy ranch at the foot of Mount Pinos, called Sawmill Mountain by the settlers. The mountain is about 10,000 feet high, and is covered with heavy pine timber. Ever since Haggin & Carr's sheep have been on the mountain, the bears from forty miles around have made annual marauding expeditions, and kept the herders on the jump all the summer. The first band of sheep and the Examiner expedition arrived at the old Sawmill simultaneously this year, and the Basque who was herding the band, having a very lively sense of the danger of his situation, pitched his tent close to the camp, where he would be under the protection of three rifles. The Basque had never been on the mountain before, but he had heard about the bears and their audacious raids, and he was not at all enamored of his job. When the campfires were started, and the forest became an enclosing wall of gloom, behind which lurked all the mysteries and menaces of the mountains, the Basque came shyly into camp, bringing a shoulder of mutton with which to establish friendly relations, and under the mellowing influence of a gla.s.s of something hot he became confidential and as communicative as his broken jargon of French and California Spanish would permit.

He had come to the mountain reluctantly, and having been told about the herder whose hand was torn off by a grizzly last year, he was still more unwilling to remain. He would stay as long as the Examiner party remained near him, but when the hunters went away he proposed to quit and hasten back to the plains, where he would have nothing worse than the coyotes to encounter. Every night after that, so long as the hunters were in that camp, the Basque came and sat at the fire until bedtime, talking about _los osos_, and when the gra.s.s and water gave out and the expedition was obliged to move camp about two miles, the gentle shepherd packed his blankets over the trail to Bakersfield, leaving his flock in the care of a leathery skinned bear-hardened Mexican.

The bears were later this year than usual in coming to the mountain, probably because the warm weather was longer delayed, and for many days the hunters scanned the trails in the canyons in vain for the footprints of grizzlies. The first indication of their arrival was given in a somewhat startling way to the correspondent one evening as he was slowly toiling through a deep, rocky ravine back to camp, after a weary tramp over the foothills of the big mountain.

The sun had set and the bottom of the ravine was dark as night. The belated searcher for bear signs skirted a dense willow thicket, and brushed against the bushes with his elbow. "Woof! Woof!" snorted a bear within ten feet of him, invisible in the thicket. His heart thumped and his rifle lock clicked, together, and which sound was the louder he could not tell. For a few seconds he stood at the edge of the thicket with his rifle ready, expecting the rush of the bear, but the animal was not in a warlike mood and did not rush, and the hunter cautiously backed away about twenty yards up the steep side of the ravine. The cracking of brush indicated that bruin was moving in the thicket, but nothing could be seen in the gathering gloom. Two or three large rocks rolled down into the willows started the bear out on a run and he could be heard crashing his way down the ravine and splashing into the pools as he went. The remainder of the journey back to camp was made through the open pine forest on the top of the mountain.

Superintendent McCullough, who has charge of Haggin & Carr's sheep camps on Pinos Mountain, stopped at the Examiner camp when he made his inspecting tours, and consultations were held with him about the bears. From the reports given him by the herders he judged that only the bears that lived on the mountain were prowling about, and that the invading army had not arrived from the Alamo and the Sespe region. A large cinnamon bear had walked into one camp about ten miles distant and killed two sheep in daylight, but the grizzlies had not begun to eat mutton. In July or August there would be bears enough to keep a man busy shinning up trees. Last year, he said, there were at least forty bears on the mountain, and they visited some of the sheep camps every night. Sometimes two or three bears would raid a camp, tree the herder and kill several sheep. The herders were not expected to fight bears or attempt to drive them away, and the owners reckoned upon the loss of several hundred sheep every summer.

Shortly before the first of July the camp was moved to Seymore Spring, about two miles from the mill, where good water and feed were plenty, and search for bear sign was continued. Every day some deep gorge or rocky ravine was visited and thoroughly hunted, and a deer was killed occasionally, but no sign of bears was found until the 3d of July, when the tracks of a very large grizzly were discovered crossing a ridge between the Lockwood Valley and the Seymour. The tracks were followed across the Seymour Valley to a spur of the mountain between the mill ravine and a deep canyon to the westward.

Camp was moved to a green cienaga at the head of the latter, which was christened Bear Canyon, and the building of a trap was begun near the mouth--about half a mile from camp. Three large pine trees served as corner posts for a pen built of twenty-inch logs, "gained" at the corners and fastened together with stout oak pins. The pen was about twelve feet long, four feet high and five feet wide inside, and the door was made of pine logs sunk into the ground and wedged and pinned securely. A door of four-inch planks, so heavy that it required three men to raise it, was set in front, between oak guides pinned vertically to the trees and suspended by a rope running over a pulley and back to a trigger that engaged with a pivoted stick of oak, to which the bait was to be fastened. Five days were consumed in the construction of the trap, and while the work was going on a bear visited the camp at night and stampeded all the saddle and pack animals out of the canyon.

A German prospector named Sparkuhle, who was staying temporarily in the camp, was cured of a severe case of skepticism that night.

Sparkuhle believed nothing that he could not see, and he declared, with exasperating iteration, "I believe there don't vas any bears in der gountry. I look for 'em every day, thinking perhaps might I could see one, but I don't could see any." And every night before he turned in, Sparkuhle said: "Vell, might did a bear come tonight. I wish I could see one, but I think there don't vas any bears at all."

Sparkuhle scorned the shelter of the bough shed, under which the Examiner outfit slept, and spread his blankets on top of a bank about six feet above a rocky shelf that was used as a pantry and kitchen.

His only weapon was his pick, and he was not afraid of being disturbed by any prowling animal.

It was about midnight when the camp was alarmed by the snorting of the horses and the clatter of hoofs galloping down the canyon, but before the cause of the disturbance could be learned a yell of surprise came from Sparkuhle, followed by a crash and a terrible clatter among the pots and pans below the bank. In another moment Sparkuhle ran into the camp and began to tell excitedly what had happened to him. He was so intensely interested in his story that he paid no attention to a three-tined fork that was sticking in him just below the end of his back. He said he was awakened by the noise in camp, and looking up thought he saw the burro standing over him. Seizing his pillow he made a swipe at the animal, and said, "Get away, Balaam!" and then the supposed burro hit him a clip and knocked him spinning over the edge of the bank, but the blow did no further damage because Sparkuhle was rolled up in half a dozen blankets. The noise of his arrival among the tinware alarmed the bear and when the party got out with lights and guns he was out of sight. Sparkuhle slept in the cabin after that.

Two days later the big bear went into a sheep camp near the mill, while the herder was cooking supper, stampeded the sheep right over the fire, caught one and killed it, and sat down within thirty yards of the herder and leisurely gorged himself with mutton. The Mexican herder described him as "grande" and "muy blanco" and said he was as tall as a mule. On the following day at noon the same bear went into another sheep camp about three miles from the mill, and stole a freshly killed sheep, which the herder had hung up for his own use.

Then he suddenly ceased his raids and disappeared and for the next three weeks the mountain seemed to be deserted by the bears.

The herders had put strychnine into the carca.s.ses of several sheep that had died of eating poisonous weeds, and McCullough thought the bears must have eaten the poisoned mutton and become sick. It requires a strong dose of strychnine to kill a grizzly, and frequently the bears get only enough to make them ill and send them into temporary retirement in some dark gorge.

But while the bears were away the mountain lions and panthers managed to keep things from becoming dull. They came into camp several times and made the canyon ring with their yowling, but they always kept brush between themselves and the fire-light, and it was impossible to get a shot at them. Their raids became so annoying that two hounds were procured and brought into camp; after that the nightprowling beasts kept at a respectful distance. Being unable to steal any more provisions from the Examiner outfit, the lions turned their attention to the sheep camps. One night a lion sneaked up through a willow thicket to the nearest sheep camp and killed three sheep. He was a dainty lion, evidently, as he only cut the throats of the sheep and drank their blood and did not eat any mutton. The same lion followed the scent of a carca.s.s that had been dragged to the bear trap for bait, but he stopped twenty yards from the trap, and went away, not caring to risk his neck by going into any such contrivance.

Wherever bait was dragged over the mountain, and it was dragged many miles for the purpose of enticing bear to the trap, the lions followed the trail, but they would not go into the trap. Still it is not safe to generalize from this fact and a.s.sume that the cougar or mountain lion never will go into a trap, for he is a most erratic and uncertain beast. Sometimes he is an arrant coward, and again he is as bold as a genuine lion. Generally a dog will keep cougars away from a camp or house, but once in a while the cougar hunts the dog and kills him.

One afternoon a cougar jumped into Joe Dye's dooryard at his ranch on the Sespe, picked up Joe's baby and sprang over the fence with it. Joe seized his rifle and shot the animal as it ran, and when the cougar felt the sting of the bullet he dropped the baby and ran up the mountain. He had seized the baby's clothes only, and the little one was not hurt. The next night the cougar returned, captured Joe's hound, carried it into the mountains and killed it.

On the 1st of August, the report reached camp that the bears were having a picnic on the Mutaw ranch and were killing hogs by the score.

John F. Cuddy's sons, the best vaqueros and bronco-riders in this part of the country, offered to go over to the Mutaw with the correspondent and la.s.so a bear if one could be found on open ground; accordingly, the party saddled up and took the trail up the Piru, arriving at the Mutaw meadows late in the night, after a rough ride of twenty miles.

In the morning Mr. Taylor, one of the owners of the ranch, was found skinning a grizzly that had eaten strychnine in pork during the night.

Mr. Taylor had put poison out all over the ranch and the prospect of catching a live bear seemed dubious, but all the poisoned meat that could be found was buried at once, and Bowers and the correspondent began building a trap to catch a bear that had been making twelve-inch tracks around the cabins. The Cuddy boys rode about looking for bear, and one of them la.s.soed an eagle that had waterlogged himself and was sitting stupidly on a rock by the creek. The bird measured nine feet across the wings. Messrs. Louis and Taylor, owners of the Mutaw, received the party hospitably and a.s.sisted in the work of preparing the trap. But Mr. Taylor forgot where he had put some of his poison, and in forty-eight hours all the dogs in the place, including the Examiner's two hounds, were stiffened out and turned up their toes.