On this expensive diet the cub throve amazingly. Good feeding was
continued after his weaning from the rubber nipple, and at the end
of three years Solomon had grown to be a fat wooly monster. He was
kept chained to a post in the warm season, and had an enclosed
stall in a big barn for his winter quarters. Ordinarily he was
good-natured, but he was a rough and not altogether safe
playfellow. The near-by bawling of cattle always aroused in him
ebullitions of rage.

"Solomon's got an awful grouch agin any noise bigger than what he
can make hisself," was the saying of the ranch hands.

When Joe Hartranft's sister, Mrs. Murray, and her two boys, Rufe
and Perry, came to the ranch to spend the month of June, Solomon
was promptly hustled into his stall in the barn. It was thought
best to have no boys fooling round the grizzly.

This would undoubtedly have been the safest disposition, but for an
oversight of the "stable boss." A big Percheron had been kept loose
in a closed stall adjoining Solomon's, and one day, when the bear's
voice was raised in remonstrance against his shrill neighing, he
had turned his heels loose against the partition which separated
them. His fierce battery had loosened two boards four or five feet
above the floor. And the cracks he made had gone unnoted, or at
least the mending had been neglected.

A few days after the visitors came, a fine shorthorn cow with a new
calf was turned into the barn for the day.