The Bear

While we lived at Show Low, owing to crop failures, we had to work at other things to live, so the two summers I worked for Mr. James Pearce, herding sheep (just as a side thought for the grandchildren, I received $20.00 per month and board, but had to cook my own food).  But what I wanted to tell about was the first summer (before I was 13 years of age) that I had my first experience with a bear.

We had moved our camp up to the top of a divide on the water shed, where part of the water from the rain and snow runs North into the Colorado River and part runs South into the Gila and Salt Rivers.  Well, we bedded the sheep down for the night, had our supper and rolled in for a good night's sleep, which we got, but at the break of day, the sheep began to move and they started down the south side of the mountain which was on the Apache reservation where we were not allowed to graze our herds, so out of bed we rolled, and my pardner prosed that I go and run the sheep back while he prepared breakfast.

So away I went down the side of the mountain after the sheep.  the going was slow because the grade was steep and was covered with large trees and a thick underbrush. But after about a mile hurrying, I had gotten ahead of the sheep and had turned them back up the mountain.  All was going nicely until we were within about 1/4 mile of camp.

The dog that was following me began to growl and came nearer me.  By this time the sun was up and I looked off to the East and under the rays of the sun, I saw Mr. Black Bear making his way into the heard of sheep.  I shouted at him and ran over that way thinking I could scare him away, but when I got between him and the sheep, instead of going the other way, he started for me.  So I soon decided that he was going to have his breakfast and didn't seem to care if it was sheep or a boy.  But I did the deciding for him by hurrying to the side of the heard, placing plenty of sheep between me and Mr. Bear, at the same time calling to the man in camp to come with the gun.

But before he arrived the sheep were scattered and the bear had disappeared. On reaching the open ground on the top of the mountain, we counted our sheep and found that about 100 were gone.  We ate our breakfast, then I stayed with the heard and the older man went to look for our lost shep.  He returned about noon with nearly 100 sheep and said he found where the bear had killed and partly eaten another one.  Later that summer, this same man killed a bear with an axe after wounding it with the last bullet he had in is gun.