The little animal did not move until he reached out his hand; when it
suddenly struck at him like an angry cat, dove into the bushes, and was
seen no more.

In the summer of 1888 an old-time trapper, named Charley Norton, while
on Loon Creek, of the middle fork of the Salmon, meddled with a she and
her cubs. She ran at him and with one blow of her paw almost knocked off
his lower jaw; yet he recovered, and was alive when I last heard of him.

Yet the very next spring the cowboys with my own wagon on the Little
Missouri round-up killed a mother bear which made but little more fight
than a coyote. She had two cubs, and was surprised in the early morning
on the prairie far from cover. There were eight or ten cowboys together
at the time, just starting off on a long circle, and of course they
all got down their ropes in a second, and putting spurs to their fiery
little horses started toward the bears at a run, shouting and swinging
their loops round their heads. For a moment the old she tried to bluster
and made a half-hearted threat of charging; but her courage failed
before the rapid onslaught of her yelling, rope-swinging assailants; and
she took to her heels and galloped off, leaving the cubs to shift for
themselves. The cowboys were close behind, however, and after half
a mile's run she bolted into a shallow cave or hole in the side of a
butte, where she stayed cowering and growling, until one of the men
leaped off his horse, ran up to the edge of the hole, and killed her
with a single bullet from his revolver, fired so close that the powder
burned her hair. The unfortunate cubs were roped, and then so dragged
about that they were speedily killed instead of being brought alive to
camp, as ought to have been done.

In the cases mentioned above the grisly attacked only after having been