The grizzly king : $b a romance of the wildCurwood, James Oliver
General
The grizzly king : $b a romance of the wild
Curwood, James Oliver
Grizzly bear -- Fiction; Wilderness areas -- Fiction
"If you go back out of this country an' write about bears, don't make a
fool o' yo'rself like most of the writin' fellows, Jimmy," he said, as they
sat back to smoke their pipes after supper. "Two years ago I took a
natcherlist out for a month, an' he was so tickled he said 'e'd send me a
bunch o' books about bears an' wild things. He did! I read 'em. I laughed
at first, an' then I got mad an' made a fire of 'em. Bears is cur'ous.
There's a mighty lot of interestin' things to say about 'em without making
a fool o' yo'rself. There sure is!"
Langdon nodded.
"One has to hunt and kill and hunt and kill for years before he discovers
the real pleasure in big game stalking," he said slowly, looking into the
fire. "And when he comes down to that real pleasure, the part of it that
absorbs him heart and soul, he finds that after all the big thrill isn't in
killing, but in letting live. I want this grizzly, and I'm going to have
him. I won't leave the mountains until I kill him. But, on the other hand,
we could have killed two other bears to-day, and I didn't take a shot. I'm
learning the game, Bruce--I'm beginning to taste the real pleasure of
hunting. And when one hunts in the right way one learns facts. You needn't
worry. I'm going to put only facts in what I write."
Suddenly he turned and looked at Bruce.
"What were some of the 'fool things' you read in those books?" he asked.
Bruce blew out a cloud of smoke reflectively.
"What made me maddest," he said, "was what those writer fellows said about
bears havin' 'marks.' Good Lord, accordin' to what they said all a bear has
to do is stretch 'imself up, put a mark on a tree, and that country is
his'n until a bigger bear comes along an' licks 'im. In one book I remember
where a grizzly rolled a log up under a tree so he could stand on it an'
put his mark above another grizzly's mark. Think of that!
"No bear makes a mark that means anything. I've seen grizzlies bite hunks
out o' trees an' scratch 'em just as a cat might, an' in the summer when
they get itchy an' begin to lose their hair they stand up an' rub against
trees. They rub because they itch an' not because they're leavin' their
cards for other bears. Caribou an' moose an' deer do the same thing to get
the velvet off their horns.
"Them same writers think every grizzly has his own range, an' they
don't--not by a long shot they don't! I've seen eight full-grown grizzlies
feedin' on the same slide! You remember, two years ago, we shot four
grizzlies in a little valley that wasn't a mile long. Now an' then there's
a boss among grizzlies, like this fellow we're after, but even he ain't
got his range alone. I'll bet there's twenty other bears in these two
valleys! An' that natcherlist I had two years ago couldn't tell a grizzly's
track from a black bear's track, an so 'elp me if he knew what a cinnamon
was!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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