--- title: "Two Cowboys Tracked Down a Silvertip Grizzly That Was Hunting Their Cattle — But Only One Returned" description: "This story from the Outdoor Life archives pits a pair of range riders against a big silvertip grizzly." date: "2026-09-22" modified: "2026-09-22" authors: - name: "N.L. McAlmond" job_title: "Contributor" link: "https://www.outdoorlife.com/authors/n-l-mcalmond.md" url: "https://www.outdoorlife.com/hunting/cowboys-track-grizzly-bear/" categories: - "Animal Attacks" - "Bear Hunting" - "Grizzly Bear Hunting" - "Hunting" - "Predator Hunting" - "Survival" tags: - "News" --- # Two Cowboys Tracked Down a Silvertip Grizzly That Was Hunting Their Cattle — But Only One Returned ![bear and cowboys]() *Outdoor Life illustration.* For the last twenty-odd years I have hunted, with rifle, longbow, and camera, nearly every species of big game in North America. And I have had my share of narrow squeaks in the pursuit of that game—several times nearly fatal ones! But the most hair-raising experience occurred quite by accident back in the late 1920’s when an old silvertip grizzly … But let me tell you the story from the beginning. All was lightness and mirth that night in the bunkhouse of the old Quartercircle C Bar N. Mingled with the odor of stale tobacco smoke was the tingling fragrance of after-shave lotion and he-man talcum. Ten boisterous cow-punchers, intent on getting to town and separating themselves from the hard-earned pay they’d received that afternoon, attempted to shave, bathe, and dress in the limited confines and with the very limited facilities of what we suspected had once been a chicken house. The waiting line in front of our only mirror was enlivened by the devil-may-care horseplay of the punchers. ## Last of the Range Riders ![cowboys in the bunk house]() *Outdoor Life illustration.* We were rawhide tough in those days: quick to brag, ready to fight, willing to ride the worst outlaw horse or to bulldog the meanest steer. We swaggered when we burred our spur rowels down the main street of Thurston, a tiny mining town in southwestern Colorado that was in the midst of a short-lived boom. We were young and wild: we called ourselves the last of the real range riders, the last of the picturesque cowpokes of song and story. We were so close to the last, in fact, that our stunts in the little mining town failed to amuse a citizenry that had, in the past, seen some really bad boys hit town to carouse and then roar back to the cattle ranges to await another pay day. Our own little capers weren’t exactly tame. Indeed, more than one pay day saw some of the boisterous hands from the ranch still in the clink on Monday morning, awaiting the pleasure of the sour old justice of the peace who dealt out prescriptions in the local pharmacy, bootleg whisky on Saturday night, and blind justice on Monday morning when court was convened. ## A Rude Interruption I speculated on the pleasures that awaited us in town as I watched Pinto Kressler, six foot two of Texas rawhide and whang leather, who was perched on his bunk simulating banjo playing on a saddle carbine and giving out discordantly, in a cracked falsetto, numerous and censorable verses of a ditty he called the Widow’s Lament. He had plenty of competition from Bob and Bill Wretler, the blond twins from Montana, who wrangled over which would wear the one suit they possessed between them. So far the argument was a draw. I had nicked my chin trying to shave with a straightedge razor in one of the brief passes I’d had at the mirror and had ducked out of the scuffle momentarily to paste a bit of paper on the cut, when the door burst open admitting a blast of ice-laden air and the Old Man—C. L. Nelson, owner of the ranch. Without ceremony or prelude, notwithstanding Saturday night, notwithstanding anything or anybody, he bellowed into the talcum-scented air: “Quiet down, boys!” Gradually the uproar subsided. “Got a job to do,” the Old Man said flatly. “I want a couple of you to take a pack horse with grub enough for four or five days and head for the valley above White Owl Creek.” “Right now?” Pinto asked cautiously. The Old Man nodded. “Them whitefaces we traipsed all over hell’s half acre looking for last fall are in that valley. The wolf trapper, Chink Jillings, who’s up at the house now trying to thaw out a couple of toes, seen ’em. And about two miles down the valley, in that little box canyon, he seen hoss tracks, mebbe six or eight, with a few colts in the bunch. I’ll bet it’s them mares and their colts I wasted ten days looking for the first part of November.” ## Threatened by a Grizzly “What’s the big hurry?” Bill Wretler asked. “There’s plenty of feed in the valley.” “Yeah,” the Old Man said, “but Chink cut the trail of a whopping big grizzly and he lit out, him not carrying anything bigger than a .22. Them mares are some of that breeding stuff I got up in Montana. I dropped a big wad of jack for ’em and they’re way too good to make a meal for one of those hog silvertips.” His weather-beaten old face wrinkled in thought as his gimlet eyes bored around the room scanning each of our faces as if in indecision. The room was still now. “It’ll only take a couple of you,” the Old Man continued. “Haze the stock into the corral so they can get at that stack of grass hay Benjy and John put up there. One of you stay whilst the other guy comes back here. If those skates are as wild as I think they’ll be, it’ll take all hands and the cook to bring ’em in!” Nobody pushed anyone else out of the way to volunteer. “Barney,” the Old Man rasped, “you figuring on goin’ to town tonight?” Barney Two-Pony, full-blooded Cheyenne, top hand undisputed, slowly uncoiled his frame from his bunk, squashed out a brown-paper cigarette, and reached for his chaps. “Nope,” he drawled laconically, buckling his batwings around wiry hips. Barney was the inevitable choice. Be it outlaw pony, renegade steer, night ride, or any and all sundry little tasks connected with the operation of a cow ranch, the top hand was expected to take over. Someday, if he lived long enough, his reward would be a foremanship—maybe! The Old Man’s eyes drifted toward me, the youngest member of the crew, the kid. I tried to squeeze my fancily garbed carcass into a crack in the wall, but the gimlet eyes were swinging closer. “You, Mac, get them fancy duds off and take a ride up there with Barney,” the Old Man said. “The experience will do you a world of good, besides being just what you need.” There it was! Of course I had a choice. I could quit; but back in those days jobs weren’t so plentiful and it was the middle of winter. The Old Man guessed my feelings, for in a softer tone he added: “Chink says that’s a whopping big bear up there, Mac. You like to hunt so mebbe you can git yourself a shot at the varmint. When you head out, stop in at the house and I’ll loan you my rifle.” Tears of rage were stinging my eyes over what I thought was a rank injustice. When he saw me throwing clothes around, the boss shrugged and stalked out. I dug out some wool pants, hooked up my sheepskin jacket, buckled on my chaps, snapping the fasteners viciously, then followed Barney out to the barn. We saddled up, towed the balky pack horse over to the cookshack, where the cook already had the grub ready for the pack bag, then headed back to the bunkhouse for our extra gear. ## Colt for Protection I had dug a couple of pairs of heavy socks and the same of underwear out of my war bag when I saw Barney take an ancient .38/40 single-action Colt from his trunk. He stood for a second, with the revolver in his hand, apparently debating, then dropped it in his pocket. “Going rustler hunting?” My question had the hint of a sneer that brought a quick scowl to Barney’s face. “The boss didn’t offer me his rifle, and if we’re going to run into a big bear I want something along to protect myself with.” He swung out the door and in minutes we were in the saddle. I still had the plank up my back when we rode past the Big House. “Let the boss keep his damned rifle,” I muttered. “I won’t need it.” We went past the high pole gate, onto the open range, and into a wintery dusk with more than a trace of nor’wester puffing in our faces. I spurred the hammer-headed bay furiously, twisting in the saddle to yank at the lead rope on the pack horse that poked along behind. Twenty yards ahead, nearly lost in the quickening smother of snow, Barney disappeared around a deep-cleft canyon entrance. Dark came crashing down the valley. More than a dozen miles of mountain riding lay ahead of us, and on Saturday night! Another jab with the spurs! ## Ready to Head South It was nearly midnight when we dropped into the draw that headed White Owl Creek. Our horses had been in snow to their knees for the last half hour, any resemblance my feet had to living members was purely coincidental, and the hand that had yawed and twisted at the lead rope on the pack horse had to be pried loose. “This,” I told myself, “is the end! My cow-punching days are all over. When we get back I’ll roll my turkey and head for Florida or South America or damn near anywhere the sun shines and the moisture isn’t curdled!” In the log barn behind the cabin we unshucked the saddles and pack, shook out sweet, high-meadow hay for the nags, then floundered through the knee-deep snow to the shack, dragging saddles, packs of grub, and blankets for our bunks. It was an old trapper’s cabin, dirt-floored and roofed, no windows, the doorway so low Barney had to stoop to clear the plate pole. The antique stove, when we got to the point of building a fire to take some of the deathly chill out of the place, gave off suffocating clouds of smoke until we discovered a can had been put atop the rusty tin pipe to keep out the snow and rain. Even then, getting a real fire going was out of the question, what with a shortage of dry wood. So we ripped open a can of corned beef, wolfed it down with hard-tack, spread our blankets on the pole bunks, and rolled in minus only our chaps, spurs, and hats. I can remember more miserable nights, but not many of them! The cold was a brittle, penetrating thing. The blankets were damp, my clothes were wet, and Barney snored something fierce although apparently he was perfectly comfortable. Along in the middle of the night I finally dropped into fitful sleep, only to awaken with a grinding cramp in one of my feet. I twisted my perspiration-dampened riding boots off and my feet slowly turned to ice. By the time the eastern sky began to lighten I was in a savage mood and more than thankful for Barney’s reluctance to talk. When we slogged out to the barn to feed the cayuses, the sky above the rock-crested screes of Kalat Mountain, high above the cabin, showed a gradual clearing. Somewhere in the fastnesses of the peak lay the headwaters of the creek that burbled 100 yards from the cabin. The night before, our nags had been too exhausted to lift one foot before another, but when I passed too close behind the bay he tried with hungry eagerness to kick my head off. We had no trouble getting a fire to burn in the cranky old sheet-iron stove that morning. Barney found a pitch-filled pine blow-down on the low slope above the creek. He chopped out a quantity of the turpentinelike substance and in a few minutes the little cabin was filled with the tantalizing aroma of sizzling bacon and steaming coffee. Barney, as top hand, figured out a search route which, it seemed, always had me fighting the chaparral-choked draws and put him on the open-timbered slopes. Slowly we circled the mountain and at last, as afternoon was blending into evening, we found the herd of twenty white-face cattle placidly browsing on pawed-out tufts of grama grass, snug in a bottom sheltered from the wind and apparently as happy as though they had good sense. ## Tracks of a Silvertip Surprisingly enough, they weren’t too hard to haze out of the canyon and head down the slope toward the creek and the adjoining corral. We were nearly in sight of the cabin when Barney, who was riding a wide right wing, swung his hand high and pointed toward the steep bluff to our right. Swinging my nag over to him, I glanced up and saw what I took for snowshoe marks. “Who the heck would be up here?” I puzzled. Barney looked at me with the tolerance of a grandfather. “That, sonny boy, is a grizzly track, and from here he sure looks like a big one. Let’s slope them critters down to the corral before they get a whiff of him and stampede clean off the range!” ## No Thought of Danger ![cowboy illustration]() *Outdoor Life illustration.* I’d never seen a grizzly in my life, and up to that time I’d never seen a grizzly track, so I hadn’t the slightest notion what silvertips are capable of in the way of destruction. Right at that moment, since all the stock seemed tractable enough—including our range ponies, which are notoriously spooky of all bear scents—I had no thought of danger. I remember laughing when Barney slipped the Colt from his waistband, where he had carried it all day, for a brief inspection and a spin of the cylinder. As he replaced the revolver and reached for his bridle reins, I razzed him: “Think you could hit a bear with that thing? What’ll you do if he finds out about it and starts throwing rocks?” “I sure hope I don’t have to use this old Colt,” Barney replied. “Not on a grizzly anyway. But it might scare him at that and give us a chance to get away.” *As I struggled frantically to escape those flailing hoofs, Barney yelled: “Silvertip!”* The seriousness of his tone had a sobering effect even on my tough young system and the ride back to camp was made in silence. As darkness fell we herded the last of the critters into the round-pole corral and I piled off and slid the half-dozen gate poles in place. The creek, which had been purposely diverted by a felled pine, trickled through one corner of the half-acre lot; a stack of wild hay lay ready at hand for feed. So far so good. If we could find the horses as easily as we had the cattle, the trip would be a lot easier than we’d expected. ## Storm on the Way While we were unsaddling the broncs I felt a chill puff of wind draw through the light-blue square that was the doorway in the horse barn. Outside a few big snowflakes ghosted slowly to earth. Occasionally the light breeze would die out to a deathly stillness as though holding its breath. “We better get plenty of wood tonight,” Barney muttered. “Big wind and snow coming.” And about midnight come it did, with a deep-throated whoop, out of the northeast. That night the creek froze from bank to bank and at daybreak the wind drove curling streamers of loose snow across its glassy surface, piling it in a six-foot windrow at the foot of the adjoining slope. We fought out to the barn and fed our horses, then struggled with armloads of hay for the twenty head of beef. By then the wind was so strong that handling hay with a pitchfork was out of the question. The critters would make a grab at the hay as it blew past them, then stand tail-humped to the wind as they chewed with great satisfaction. We spent all that day making trips from the stack to the corral with loads of hay, back to the cabin to thaw out with mugs of scalding coffee, then to the pine flat for loads of wood to keep the stove glowing in defiance of the frost that crept through cracks in the logs. Throughout the day the storm wailed and screamed, and during the night that followed I awoke a dozen times to the howling blasts of gale strength that slammed against the cabin walls. The storm continued next day and night and the next. Our grub, figured to last four or five days, was running low. We were going farther and farther afield for wood, and on the flats the snow was belly-deep to a tall horse. Neither of us ventured to guess what the drifts would be like on the lee side of the ridges. ## Homemade Snowshoes Then, as suddenly as it had come, the wind stopped. The overcast slowly broke, with the exception of a few fluffs that drifted toward the horizon, and in a couple of hours the sky was a calm, peaceful vault of blue. Barney took the ax, uncoiled the riata from his saddle, and plowed out across the flat at the rear of the cabin to a willow brake. He cut a double armload of slender twigs, flipped a loop around them, and dragged them across the snow to the cabin. At my question, he grunted: “Snowshoes.” And in half an hour he turned out a very fair pair of bear-paws. “I think I know where them mares are holed up,” Barney said, as though thinking out loud, his black brows pulled together in a scowl of concentration. “It’s only a couple of miles to the box canyon quite a bit west of where we hit the ridge yesterday. Lots of feed in there even after a storm like this, and them cayuses won’t be moving much in deep snow, not if they’ve got colts with ’em. You lay out a good feed for the beef and for the horses in the barn, too. Then go up on the ridge and get all the wood you can find.” He turned and swung across the flat, crossed the creek, and started up the ridge with the ease of long experience. ## Signs of Trouble The last head of stock was fed, the stack of wood behind the rickety little stove was reassuringly high, and I was tearfully peeling a washbasin full of onions when the crunch of Barney’s webs sounded outside. “They’re up there, all right,” he grunted, after coming into the cabin and extending his sinewy hands to the stove. “Four mares and four filly colts. It’s fair going up through the valley to the end of the box canyon, but that blasted grizzly is still hanging around up on the slope. What he’s doing out yet, I dunno, but I cut his tracks twice on the way in and once on the way out. All fresh. I dunno.” He rubbed his leathery cheek reflectively. “I sure wish we’d brought the Old Man’s rifle. If that ornery son gets into them horses, the ranch is gonna be short some breeding stock.” The possible depredations of a roaming bear didn’t seem very important to me at the moment, since the bacon grease was burning and the spuds and onions weren’t all peeled. But after I’d rolled in my blankets later in the evening, Barney dug a stub of candle and a tiny sack with some oily rags out of his saddlebag. He laid the Colt on the table and began to give it a thorough cleaning. He was wiping each cartridge before he inserted it in the loading gate, when I queried sleepily: “Where’d you get the gun, Barney?” “My old man found a miner that’d been lost in the Big Horns, up in Wyoming. When they got him out to a ranch, the guy dug this out of his coat. Said it was all he had and he wanted to give it to my old man for saving his life. My old man gave it to me when I left the reservation and I’ve had it ever since.” Then he added, more to himself than to me: “I hope I don’t have to use it up here!” An icy dawn was breaking when we led the horses, loaded with hay, away from the cabin the next morning. We’d had no trouble lashing a great bundle of feed on the pack horse—aside from a few half-hearted snorts and a little sidestepping. The cow ponies, however, protested. As a last resort we forefooted and blindfolded the skates. With their burdens aboard, they bucked with the ferocity of outlaws but we finally lined them out. Barney went ahead until we got across the creek. Then, because I couldn’t get anywhere on the improvised snowshoes, I took the lead to break trail through the deep snow. It was grueling work until we hit the end of the narrow valley that led into the box canyon. There the snow was only a couple of feet deep, with very few drifts and the going was easier. ## Barney Makes Plans The opening into the canyon was not more than a few feet wide. A tiny stream of water trickled down the middle of it and it was bordered by a heavy growth of willow, hardhack, buckbrush and—farther away—scrub oak. Inside the box the snow was only a few inches deep. Here and there a bristle of bunch grass, clipped down where the horses we were seeking had browsed it, stood out against the white carpet. Horse tracks, large and small, were all over the mouth of the natural box, but none led out of the opening toward the valley that lay below. ## An Urgent Summons “We’ll dump the hay a quarter of a mile in,” said Barney. “Then we can go down to the ranch and tomorrow, with some help, we’ll come back and haze all this stuff out. The nags have feed and water. They’d be all right here all winter if that damn bear wasn’t hanging around.” As Barney took the lead rope and started up the canyon he raised his eyes and scanned the sheer limestone cliffs that surrounded it. They towered 1,000 feet above us and were bare except where an occasional ledge supported a scrubby growth of conifers, scrub oaks, and a few scraggly bushes. Barney found a spot to his liking on the level, sage-dotted flat and we unroped the hay, scattered it in a long windrow, and began to coil the diamond ropes. “You lash them,” Barney ordered. “I’ll ride up and take a look at them horses. Be back in a minute.” He swung up on his bony black and loped him around a bend in the canyon. I tied the diamond ropes securely to the crosstree on the pack horse, dug out the makings of a smoke, and was contentedly toasting my lungs with the first drag when I heard Barney yell. He sounded excited and a second later I made out: “Come up here quick!” ## Killer’s First Victim I grabbed the pack nag’s rope and flipped a couple of half hitches around a convenient sagebrush, then climbed on my bay and fed him the hooks. A sharp shoulder of granite rock formed the bend in the canyon. Just behind it, Barney’s black stood ground-hitched, ears tipped forward, nostrils dilated at something behind a screen of scrub that was not in my line of vision. Barney’s black hat raised above the brush. His face was twisted in a scowl of hate. “Here’s one foal that’ll never have no colts for the ranch,” he said. “That hog silvertip finally got in here. Musta come down the cliff and killed this colt. Now he’s laying up there digesting his supper so’s he can come back and stuff his rotten guts with some more.” The colt’s skull was crushed just as though it had been struck with a great maul. The paunch was opened up. Long strings of entrails, stripped clean of fat, trailed out onto the blood-soaked snow. One flank was eaten away, the hide on the back had been slit as though with a sharp knife, the loins were stripped out. Barney pushed his hat to the back of his head. “Them other horses musta beat it to the other end of the canyon. It’ll be a death trap unless we down that bear, or get the mares out. He’ll kill every one of them sure as hell. Look here where he waited for them to get close enough so he could jump ’em!” Twenty feet back in the scrub, bunched close together, were the bear’s great tracks. The snow was pressed down where his belly had hugged the ground. His claws had dug great furrows when they impelled his body in the lethal charge. We went deeper into the thicket, through it, and then came out on the other side. “Here’s where the big devil come down off the cliff,” Barney said. “Smart, too! The wind always draws up this canyon, so there was no chance of the horses getting his scent until he was close enough to make the kill. We better head for the ranch and get help.” Barney whirled and headed for the horses. We mounted and put them to a stiff lope back to the pack horse. After picking him up, we headed for the mouth of the natural trap. ## All Hell Broke Loose Barney rode ahead, dragging the extra horse. They splashed through the trickle of water and swung into the mouth of the canyon. My mount had taken only a couple of steps on the slippery rocks when all hell broke loose! Barney’s black reared straight up, screaming as though in agony. The pack horse reared back, fairly yanking Barney out of his saddle. After squatting in terror, my own cayuse made two tremendous bounds. In the middle of the second one his unshod hoofs slipped on the rocks. He struggled desperately for balance; then, as he fell on his side, he threw me under the madly flailing hoofs of the other horses. I was struggling to get out from under the mix-up, not a little stunned by the suddenness of the whole thing, when I heard Barney yell almost in my ear: “Silvertip! Silvertip!” He overtook Barney’s thin-flanked black, pacing the wildly screaming horse as easily as though it were standing still. Then the bear bounded. His huge right forepaw swung over the scrawny neck of the horse, and as they fell his left forepaw covered the black’s nose like the clutch of a human hand. Doubling his hind leg under the horse the grizzly, with a single, powerful thrust, disemboweled the poor nag, whose ribs were crushed like toothpicks. ![bear vs cowboys]() *Outdoor Life illustration.* ## An Ominous Sign The grizzly got up, looked around, and growled. The sound was low, menacing. And the brute’s head swung toward us. We sat transfixed by what we had witnessed. A movement of Barney’s hand tore my eyes from the massive bear. Barney was fumbling inside his shirt for his revolver. “My God,” I asked myself, “what can he do with that thing against half a ton of savage brute?” A low rumbling growl like distant thunder rolled out of the bear’s throat. A great silvery ruff rose on the back of his neck like the hackles on a fighting dog. Slowly his head began to swing from side to side. I remembered the ominous saying: “Get ready to run when a grizzly rolls his head!” We inched to our feet and looked for cover. But there was only scrub, barely higher than our heads. There were no rocks we could climb, either. Our only weapons were our bare hands and one antiquated Colt with five cartridges in it! The bear’s head was swinging faster now. The rumbling thunder issuing from his bloody, half-open jaws grew louder. Very slowly he took a step toward us . . . another . . . another. Deliberately he raised one paw, placed it down firmly in front of him . . . then another . . . a step at a time. Beads of perspiration trickled down my face. My hands and feet were leaden, incapable of motion. “He’s going to charge!” Barney whispered hoarsely. “Get ready to run when I shoot!” When the beast was about thirty feet from us Barney leveled the revolver. I was still vainly looking for a place to go or something with which to defend myself when Barney shouted: “Here he comes!” The snarling, grinding grizzly roar that welled up from the brute’s throat seeming to set the very earth to trembling. It dwarfed the crash of the Colt to the snapping of a twig. I took one step and the bear was upon us. ## Colt vs. Grizzly The next few seconds are a horrible, confused blur in my memory. I remember seeing the Colt belch flame a second time. Then Barney was flung a dozen feet by a flailing blow from a paw armed with five wicked claws. The gun flipped out of his hand. I tripped, and as I fell something struck my face, gashing it. Not six inches from my eyes lay the heavy revolver. Scooping it up, I thumbed the hammer back. Then I raised my head and viewed a ghastly sight. The great, silver-coated bear was slapping Barney as a cat would maul a mouse! His face and head were a bloody mess. A great gash in one side of his coat was stained scarlet. ## Nightmare From Hades All this I saw as I leveled the Colt and pulled the trigger. With the report of the gun the ferocious silvertip turned toward me, reared himself to his full height, and snapped at his shoulder. As I thumbed the hammer back the beast, screaming bloody froth, came lumbering toward me like some nightmare out of Hades! His mouth was open and his roaring was thunderous. His lips were drawn back, baring white teeth and scarlet gums. The muscles on his nostrils stood out like cords, and between his eyes was a furrow two inches deep. The fires of hell itself burned in his glaring, piglike eyes as he reared over me! Some other hand must have aimed that Colt and pulled the trigger. The grip slammed back against my palm. At the shot the great bulk tottered. I remember glazing eyes, and the snapping of mighty jaws as the grizzly swayed like a giant of the forest that has felt the bite of the feller’s ax. His massive joints buckled and, suddenly, like a pole-axed steer, he collapsed in a heap. Not half a dozen feet from me he lay; my first grizzly, his gigantic frame still quivering in the last paroxysms of death. From his open jaws a low gurgling sounded; from his nostrils twin trickles of blood stained the snow. But there was no elation to the kill. A few feet beyond the bear lay Barney Two-Pony, twisted grotesquely, one side a mangled mess of coat, flesh, and protruding ribs. A sob shook my frame and for a minute I held my face in hands that shook as with the ague. I rose on rubbery legs, legs that carried me two steps nearer Barney before they crumbled under me. Barney was dead; of that I was certain. A choking pain was stealing up my right side; every breath was an agony. I realized, for the first time, that the hoofs of the stampeding horses had dealt me some crippling blows. Then I felt myself sliding—sliding. I felt snow on my face. A black cloud seemed to be gathering me into its soft folds. I was in a long tunnel, it was spinning, and I was spinning into the vortex . . . farther . . . farther. I awoke in a bed with honest-to-goodness white sheets on it. A blurred face hung over me and a calm voice kept saying: “You’re all right now. Just lie still.” Every breath sent a stabbing pain down my right side. My left leg felt as if it had gone to sleep. Nearly a month I lay in that bed in an agony of delirium and shock. They told me afterward I had six cracked ribs and a fractured ankle—besides a first-class case of nervous hysteria. When the fuzz of delirium had passed and the boys from the ranch and the Old Man dropped in I got the rest of the story. The morning Barney and I packed the hay into the box canyon the Old Man and the Wretler twins had left the ranch to bring us more grub and see how we were faring. Not finding us at the line camp, they followed our fresh-broken trail up the valley. Less than a quarter mile from the entrance to the canyon they heard the first shot and, fearing the worst, barged in. Barney was dead when they got to us. They thought I was dead too until they got me back to the ranch and the doc from Thurston, who had spent a lifetime following mining booms and patching up a lot of broken humanity, came out to look me over carefully. “I’ll strap up this young buck,” he said. “Then we’ll load him in my car and take him to the hospital. Nothing but a few busted ribs and a bum ankle. Back in the old days, with a couple of scratches like that, he’d have been able to ride a hoss in!” **Read Next: [‘Better a Live Coward Than a Dead Hero.’ My Lifetime of Grizzly Bear Encounters]()** ## A Grim Souvenir They told me the last slug from that .38/40 Colt had entered the grizzly’s underjaw and nearly torn off the top of his head. They guessed he was nine feet long, and the Old Man said he was “most as big as a hoss.” I never went back to see the remains of the huge beast. I had lost all interest in that grizzly. It was early spring before I got back to the ranch to gather up my duffel and hit the road. When I went to the ranch house to say so long to the Old Man, he brought out a package wrapped in oiled silk and laid it in my hands. “I think Barney woulda wanted you to have this, Mac,” he said earnestly. “He didn’t have no kin that I know of, and I reckon you’ll take keer of it. So long and good luck!” Today that old Colt, rejuvenated by a new bluing job and a pair of fancy plastic grips, hangs in my gun cabinet. Once, not a year ago, it saved my bacon in a little deal with another bear, an outlaw black, and its spot in my affections is very high. *This story was originally published in the October 1948 issue of Outdoor Life.*