Last spring, since the above was written, a bear killed a man not very far from my ranch. It was at the time of the floods. Two hunters came down the river, by our ranch, on a raft, stopping to take dinner. A score or so of miles below, as we afterwards heard from the survivor, they landed, and found a bear in a small patch of brushwood. After waiting in vain for it to come out, one of the men rashly attempted to enter the thicket, and was instantly struck down by the beast, before he could so much as fire his rifle. It broke in his skull with a blow of its great paw, and then seized his arm in its jaws, biting it through and through in three places, but leaving the body and retreating into the bushes as soon as the unfortunate man’s companion approached. We did not hear of the accident until too late to go after the bear, as we were just about starting to join the spring round-up. THE VANISHED SCENE HAL G. EVARTS From “The Passing of the Old West.” Reprinted by permission of the publishers, Little, Brown, and Company.[31] Wherever men fared, no matter how secluded the pocket of the hills to which they penetrated, they found evidence that some solitary wanderer had been before them. His horses had grazed in hidden meadows and they found the ashes of his camp fires on the shores of unmapped lakes. It was said that the range that rimmed the new land in on the east was impenetrable, that no man could cross through its wild passes; but in the dead of winter, long after the Crow tribe had taken to winter quarters in the lower valleys, some white man’s lone trail was often seen leading down out of these peaks which others shunned even in the warmth of summer. He was even welcome in the wigwams of the Crows and frequently he tarried for a few days in their villages, but his restlessness always drove him forth to leave his tracks in the secluded fastnesses of the winter hills. When a party of explorers pressed westward up the valley of the Stinking Water to determine if an entrance might be effected from the east, they found the trails of horses leading up a tributary stream which broke in from the west where the main river flared back in a wide sweeping curve to the north and east. These tracks led up an elk trail, threaded the mazes of a frowning gorge, crossed the lower extremities of late-melting snow banks and came out at last upon the Yellowstone Slope.