Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/284

216 one, and the one I had killed the day previous, on to our horses and returned to camp with about all the meat the horses were able to carry.

The next morning I told the other men that as they now knew the elk range and how to hunt them, and could get along without me as well as not, that I would hunt for a grizzly bear, and if I could only kill a grizzly I would be ready to go home. I spent the next three days bear hunting, and saw any amount of sign, but only saw one bear and did not get a shot at it.

After being out about two weeks, and all having enough of hunting, they thought, to last them a year--as they had killed more or less deer, and one of them had killed an elk—and time being about up for the tug to come after us, we pulled up camp and started for the bay, arriving there on the 19th. The tug arrived on the 20th, about noon.

We reached San Francisco that evening, about dark, unloaded our baggage and meat, hired a man to watch it that night and we saddled up and rode out to the Fort.

The following morning I returned to the city, hired a team and took our baggage, as well as the meat we had killed, back to the Fort.

I was hailed several times while passing through the city by parties who wished to buy my mammoth elk horns, but I would not sell them, having already given them to Col. Elliott.

I stayed around the city until the middle of February, not knowing what to do to kill time, and loafing is the hardest work I ever did.

About this time Col. Elliott received orders to go out