SKOOKUM JIM

SKOOKUM JIM had been hunting deer.
Climbing along the sharp ridge, to where
he could look off into the two big basins
below—big and gray under the snowy
sky, he could see the heads of a dozen
deer. One had a remarkable set of antlers.

With catlike walk, he was angling down
on them; when he surprised a huge old
she bear and her two cubs, digging out a
family of gophers.

She stared back at him. He stared back
at her. Suddenly old Silvertip stood up
on her haunches, with flashing snarling
fangs bared at the hunter, with his long
gun in his sweating fist. Skookum Jim
had killed many bears with his Hudson's
Zay trade gun. Soon, he thought, the
bear, fighting mad, would reach him—then
he would have a show-down.

There on the mountain slope, about
three miles above Cache Creek, in the
Cariboo, in early 1878, the Indian and the
grizzly fought. The two frightened cubs,
perched high in a nearby tree, watched
the scrap.

“She'll charge me under a full head of
steam,” panted Jim—“I must get her
then.”

So the battle commenced. His first shot
seemed to have no effect, and only seemed
to infuriate the brute more. A wild game
of tag around the tree began, the Indian
thinking each moment would be his last.

Jim, while dodging both front paws,
dropped a handful of powder into the
muzzle of his gun, followed by a round

bullet, which for speed in loading he car-
ried in his mouth. ;

This ball being smaller than the bore of
the gun, dropped to the breech. Then
with a dash of powder in the “Pan”, he
placed the muzzle of the musket in the
bear’s open mouth.

Three drams of Curtiss & Harvey’s
F-.F, powder and the lead pill, took all the
fight out of Mrs Bear! The playful cubs
were more easily dispatched.

Then, Jim called on the Chinese cook
at the Cache Creek hotel and sold him the
paws of the huge bear and the two year-
ling cubs. “Good medicine, good med-
icine,” smiled the Chinese. “Plenty lick-
ings on paw, allee samee good for boils!”

“Tt was Skookum Jim’s lucky day,”
said a well-known old timer. “I knew
Jim pretty well. He liked to brag perhaps
a little, about his prowess as a mighty
hunter. So he told me about this fight
with his wonderful gun.

“That these old Trade guns were ‘built
for business’ I saw many proofs, while
stationed at Cache Creek, on the Cariboo
Stage Road, in the late 70's.

FHupson’s Bay TrapE Guns Now Rare

“When I was on a prospecting trip in
the Cariboo in 1929, I found the exact
mate to the gun carried by Skookum Jim
that day, back in 1878. I have only suc-
ceeded in finding two of them, in a search
extending over ten years!”

This typical old Hudson's Bay Trade

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