After a wild ride on cayooses across Clarke's Fork and on the glowing pink side-slopes of Bear Tooth, and a camp in the hills, the ponies, which are always astray, were caught, and a game-trail followed among the mountains. Suddenly, Houston, in a stage-whisper, exclaimed, "We've got him! He's an old buster, he is!" He had seen a large gray bear--improperly called a grizzly--feeding a mile away in a long wide cooly. A rough, scrambling ride under cover of a spur, amid snow-drifts and tumbled trees, enabled the bear-hunters to tie up their ponies and push on afoot. If a man desire to lose confidence in his physical powers, let him try a good run with a Winchester rifle in hand nine thousand feet above tidewater. Rounding the edge of a hill and crossing a snow-drift, they came in view of Bruin sixty yards away. He came straight toward them against the wind, when there appeared on the left Bruin No. 2, to which the doctor directed his attention. Both bears fell at the crack of the rifles, and with grunt and snort rolled to the foot of the cooly. Houston climbed a snowbank to reconnoitre, aware, as there were no trees to climb, that an open cooly was no good place in which to face wounded bears. Away went the doctor. "Let them alone, doctor," said Houston. "Hold up! That valley's full of bears." For he had seen a third. The doctor paused a moment, and then there was a rush down the slope. A second shot finished one bear, and then began a running fight of a mile, in which wind was of more value than courage. Finally, Bruin No. 2 stopped. Leaving C. to end his days, the doctor and Houston pursued No. 3. As the bear grew weak and they approached him, the doctor's excitement and Houston's quite reasonable prudence rose together. "Don't go down that cooly, doctor." Then a shot or two, a growl, and the doctor gasping, "Do you think I left my practice to let that bear die in his bed?" "Well, the place is full of bears," said George; and so on they went, now a shot and now a growl, and then a hasty retreat of Bruin, until, utterly blown and in full sight of his prey, the unhappy doctor murmured in an exhausted voice, "Give me one cool shot, George." "Darn it!" replied George, "who's been warming your shots?" And this one cool shot ended the fray. Returning, they found the judge had driven his bear into a thicket, and, having probably taken out a _ne exeat_ or an injunction, or some such effective legal remedy against him, awaited reinforcements. As George and the doctor arrived the bear moved out into the open, and was killed by a final shot. Mr. Jump informs us that one gets an awful price out of the Chinese for bear-galls; and it is the judge's opinion that at this supreme moment the doctor would have taken a contract to supply all China with bile of Bruin. I suspect our friend George has since told at many a camp-fire how the doctor's spurs danced down the coolies, and how the judge corralled his bear.