Some said it was a grizzly, and others a silvertip, and one
man tried to settle the difficulty by saying that there wasn't
any difference between them. But it was certainly a big bear, and
filled the whole wagon-box. Ollie sidled through the crowd and
asked so many questions of the man, who was named Reynolds, that
he good-naturedly gave Ollie one of the largest of the claws. It
was five inches long.
At noon we went down to the camp of the freighters on the
outskirts of town, near Rapid Creek. There must have been fifty
"outfits"--Jack said that was the right word--and several hundred
mules, as many oxen, and a few horses. The animals were, most of
them, wandering about wherever they pleased, the mules and horses
taking their dinner out of nosebags, and the mules keeping up a
gentle exercise by kicking at one another. It seemed a hopeless
confusion, but the men were sitting about on the ground, calmly
cooking their dinners over little camp-fires. One man, whom we
had got acquainted with in the morning at Smith's, asked us to
have dinner with him, and made the invitation so pressing that we
accepted.
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