I do
not believe them and I never met the guide who did. A rifle is made
for killing. When a man goes out with one he means to kill. He may
keep within the law, but that is not the question. It is a question of
spirit, and men who love to hunt are yielding to and always developing
the old primitive instinct to kill. The meaning of the spirit of life
is not clear to them. An argument may be advanced that, according to
the laws of self-preservation and the survival of the fittest, if a
man stops all strife, all fight, then he will retrograde. And that is
to say if a man does not go to the wilds now and then, and work hard
and live some semblance of the life of his progenitors, he will
weaken. It seems that he will, but I am not prepared now to say
whether or not that would be well. The Germans believe they are the
race fittest to survive over all others--and that has made me a
little sick of this Darwin business.
[Illustration: A BLACK BEAR TREED]
To return, however, to the fact that to ride after hounds on a wild
chase is a dangerous and wonderfully exhilarating experience, I will
relate a couple of instances, and I will leave it to my readers to
judge whether or not it is a cowardly sport.
One afternoon a rancher visited our camp and informed us that he had
surprised a big black bear eating the carcass of a dead cow.
"Good! We'll have a bear to-morrow night," declared Teague, in
delight.
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