When clothed he went home a
bruised and lacerated man."
CHAPTER XXII.
BEAR HUNT OF 1842.
One day in winter my brother-in-law, Reuben Crandell, and myself started
to go hunting deer, as we supposed. We went south across the windfall,
started a flock of deer and were following them. We had a good tracking
snow and thought it was a good day for hunting. We followed the deer
south across Reed Creek and saw a little ahead of us quite a path. It
appeared as though a herd of ponies had passed along there. (Then there
were plenty of French ponies running in the woods.) When we came up to
the trail or path, that we saw they had made, in the snow we discovered
it was four bears which had made the path. They had passed along a little
time before for their tracks were fresh and new. There seemed to be a
grand chance for us and we started after them. We either walked very fast
or ran, sometimes as fast as we could stand it to run.
In this way we had followed them several miles and expected to see them
every minute. We were going a little slower when I looked one side of us
and there was an Indian, on a trot, going in the same direction that we
were.
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