One morning Bowers returned from a hunt for the horses, two of which had been struck and slightly wounded by the bear a few nights before, and had run away, and reported the discovery of a dead steer within 150 yards of an unfinished trap, about a quarter of a mile from camp. The animal appeared to have been killed two nights before, and the bear had made but one meal off the carcass. As he might be expected to return that night, all haste was made to finish the trap. Bowers rode out to Gorman's Station to get some nails and honey, while the correspondent paid a visit to one of General Beal's old corrals and stole some planks to make a door. He packed the planks up the mountain, and was using the hammer and saw with great diligence and a tremendous amount of noise, when bruin sauntered down the ridge, looked curiously at him and calmly began eating an early supper, wholly indifferent to the noise of the hammer and the presence of the man. It was nearly dark when Bowers rode up to the trap, his horse in a lather composed of equal parts of perspiration and honey, the latter having leaked profusely from the cans tied to the saddle. Tossing the nails to the correspondent, Bowers hastily dismounted and went afoot up the ridge toward the dead steer, intending to place a can of honey near it. In about a minute Bowers was seen running from the ridge in fifteen-foot jumps, and as he approached the trap he shouted: "The bear is there now!" "Is that so?" said the correspondent. "I thought he had finished his supper and had gone away by this time." Bowers had approached to within forty yards of the bear before seeing him, and the bear had merely raised his head, taken a look at the intruder and resumed his eating. As it had become too dark to drive nails, and there was no longer any reason for finishing the door that night, Bowers fetched the rifles from camp and the two men went up the ridge to take a better look at the bear. Had there been light enough to make the rifle sights visible, it would have been hard to resist the temptation of turning loose at the old fellow from behind a convenient log; but it was impossible to draw a bead on him, and it would have been sheer foolhardiness to shoot and take the chances of a fight in the dark with a wounded grizzly. Besides, if shot at and missed, the bear would probably not return, and all the chances of getting him into the trap would be lost. So the two sat on a log and watched the grizzly till the night came on thick and dark, when they returned to camp.