Once I killed a grisly in this manner. It was early in the fall, but
snow lay on the ground, while the gray weather boded a storm. My camp
was in a bleak, wind-swept valley, high among the mountains which form
the divide between the head-waters of the Salmon and Clarke's Fork of
the Columbia. All night I had lain in my buffalo-bag, under the lea of a
windbreak of branches, in the clump of fir-trees, where I had halted
the preceding evening. At my feet ran a rapid mountain torrent, its
bed choked with ice-covered rocks; I had been lulled to sleep by the
stream's splashing murmur, and the loud moaning of the wind along the
naked cliffs. At dawn I rose and shook myself free of the buffalo robe,
coated with hoar-frost. The ashes of the fire were lifeless; in the dim
morning the air was bitter cold. I did not linger a moment, but snatched
up my rifle, pulled on my fur cap and gloves, and strode off up a side
ravine; as I walked I ate some mouthfuls of venison, left over from
supper.

Two hours of toil up the steep mountain brought me to the top of a spur.
The sun had risen, but was hidden behind a bank of sullen clouds. On the
divide I halted, and gazed out over a vast landscape, inconceivably wild
and dismal. Around me towered the stupendous mountain masses which make
up the backbone of the Rockies. From my feet, as far as I could see,
stretched a rugged and barren chaos of ridges and detached rock masses.
Behind me, far below, the stream wound like a silver ribbon, fringed
with dark conifers and the changing, dying foliage of poplar and quaking
aspen. In front the bottoms of the valleys were filled with the sombre
evergreen forest, dotted here and there with black, ice-skimmed tarns;
and the dark spruces clustered also in the higher gorges, and were
scattered thinly along the mountain sides. The snow which had fallen lay
in drifts and streaks, while, where the wind had scope it was blown off,
and the ground left bare.