or crunched the neck bone. Some of his victims were slain far from the
river, in winding, brushy coulies of the Bad Lands, where the broken
nature of the ground rendered stalking easy. Several of the ranchmen,
angered at their losses, hunted their foe eagerly, but always with ill
success; until one of them put poison in a carcass, and thus at last, in
ignoble fashion, slew the cattle-killer.

Mr. Clarence King informs me that he was once eye-witness to a bear's
killing a steer, in California. The steer was in a small pasture, and
the bear climbed over, partly breaking down, the rails which barred the
gateway. The steer started to run, but the grisly overtook it in four or
five bounds, and struck it a tremendous blow on the flank with one paw,
knocking several ribs clear away from the spine, and killing the animal
outright by the shock.

Horses no less than horned cattle at times fall victims to this great
bear, which usually spring on them from the edge of a clearing as they
graze in some mountain pasture, or among the foot-hills; and there is
no other animal of which horses seem so much afraid. Generally the bear,
whether successful or unsuccessful in its raids on cattle and horses,
comes off unscathed from the struggle; but this is not always the case,
and it has much respect for the hoofs or horns of its should-be prey.
Some horses do not seem to know how to fight at all; but others are both
quick and vicious, and prove themselves very formidable foes, lashing
out behind, and striking with their fore-hoofs. I have elsewhere given
an instance of a stallion which beat off a bear, breaking its jaw.

Quite near my ranch, once, a cowboy in my employ found unmistakable
evidence of the discomfiture of a bear by a long-horned range cow. It
was in the early spring, and the cow with her new-born calf was in a