Traveling alone in the Rockies, Colonel Roosevelt came at sundown to a little ridge whence he could look into the hollow beyond--and there he saw a big grizzly walking thoughtfully home to bed. At the first shot, “he uttered a loud moaning grunt and plunged forward at a heavy gallop, while I raced obliquely down the hill to cut him off. After going a few hundred feet he reached a laurel thicket ... which he did not leave.... As I halted I heard a peculiar savage whine from the heart of the brush. Accordingly I began to skirt the edge standing on tiptoe, and gazing earnestly in to see if I could not get a glimpse of his hide. When I was at the narrowest part of the thicket he suddenly left it directly opposite, and then wheeled and stood broadside to me on the hillside a little above. He turned his head stiffly toward me, scarlet strings of froth hung from his lips, his eyes burned like embers in the gloom. I held true, aiming behind the shoulder, and my bullet shattered the point or lower end of his heart, taking out a big nick. Instantly the great bear turned with a harsh roar of fury and challenge, blowing the bloody foam from his mouth, so that I saw the gleam of his white fangs; and then he charged straight at me, crashing and bounding through the laurel bushes so that it was hard to aim. “I waited until he came to a fallen tree, raking him as he topped it with a ball which entered his chest and went through the cavity of his body, but he neither swerved nor flinched, and at the moment I did not know that I had struck him. He came unsteadily on, and in another moment was close upon me. I fired for his forehead, but my bullet went low, entering his open mouth, smashing his lower jaw, and going into the neck. I leaped to one side almost as I pulled trigger, and through the hanging smoke the first thing I saw was his paw as he made a vicious side blow at me. The rest of his charge carried him past. As he struck he lurched forward, leaving a pool of bright blood where his muzzle hit the ground; but he recovered himself and made two or three jumps onward, while I hurriedly jammed a couple of cartridges into the magazine, my rifle only holding four, all of which I had fired. Then he tried to pull up, but as he did so his muscles seemed to give way, his head drooped, and he rolled over--each of my first three bullets had inflicted a mortal wound.”