or white man to go nigher than a day's journey to the place. And up
in the Rampart Mountains there's a curious kind of bear called the
'side-hill grizzly.' That's because he's traveled on the side-hills ever
since the Flood, and the two legs on the down-hill side are twice as
long as the two on the up-hill. And he can out-run a jack rabbit when he
gets steam up. Dangerous? Catch you! Bless you, no. All a man has to do
is to circle down the hill and run the other way. You see, that throws
mister bear's long legs up the hill and the short ones down. Yes, he's a
mighty peculiar creature, but that wasn't what I started in to tell
about.

"They've got another kind of bear up on the Yukon, and his legs are all
right, too. He's called the bald-face grizzly, and he's jest as big as
he is bad. It's only the fool white men that think of hunting him.
Indians got too much sense. But there's one thing about the bald-face
that a man has to learn: he never gives the trail to mortal creature.
If you see him comin', and you value your skin, you get out of his path.
If you don't, there's bound to be trouble. If the bald-face met Jehovah
Himself on the trail, he'd not give him an inch. O, he's a selfish
beggar, take my word for it. But I had to learn all this. Didn't know
anything about bear when I went into the country, exceptin' when I was a
youngster I'd seen a heap of cinnamons and that little black kind. And
they was nothin' to be scared at.

"Well, after we'd got settled down on our claim, I went up on the hill
lookin' for a likely piece of birch to make an ax-handle out of. But
it was pretty hard to find the right kind, and I kept a-goin' and kept
a-goin' for nigh on two hours. Wasn't in no hurry to make my choice, you
see, for I was headin' down to the Forks, where I was goin' to borrow a
log-bit from Old Joe Gee. When I started, I'd put a couple of sour-dough