A BLACK HILLS ADVENTURE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume V, Issue 240, 7 December 1877, Page 13

A BLACK HILLS ADVENTURE.

A few days ago, a man named Montgomery Smith, hailing from St. Louis, had two singular and narrow escapes rolled into one. He left a camp about thirty miles above the Hills to bring letters to post, and, in trying to shorten the distance a little, he lost the regular trail and got into a had bit of country. While hunting for the trail, he came across fresh signs of Indians, and, while hurrying out of the neighbourhood, he ran directly upon a large brown bear, which was sleeping on the sunny side of a thicket. The thicket was on a side hill, and Smith was going at a good pace when he turned the clump. The bear was so near when Smith came in sight of him, that there was neither time to halt nor a chance to turn out, and bruin was cleared by a flying leap. He made a stroke at Smith as he went over, inflicting a .slight scratch on one leg, and then set off after the miner with the intention of eating him for dinner. The flight led over broken ground, up and down a ridge, and then along the base of a broken ledge. Knowing that the bear would soon overtake him, Smith had his eyes peeled for some place of refuge, and he found a good one. Close to the ground was a rift in the ledge made by part of the rocks setling down or crumbling away. He saw it when only thirty feet away, and the bear was not a hundred feet in his rear. There was no time to guess whether the crevice was big enough to admit the man, and too small to admit the bear in after him, or so small that the victim would he there overtaken and devoured. He had dropped his gun to aid his flight, and running at full speed he made a dive and went into the crevice head first, raking enough hide off his shoulders and back to make a pair of baby shoes. The bear wasn't ten seconds behind him, and as Smith reached the back end of the cave, which was not over six feet deep, the bear put in its head and mouth, and tried to work in his body. This he couldn't do, owing to his stout shoulders, but for a quarter of an hour Montgomery Smith was doubtless the worst frightened man in North America. There was room enough for him to turn around in, but he was compelled to lie at full length and look into the fiery eyes of the bear which could get within four feet of him and wanted to come nearer. Bruin didn't give up trying till he had sadly cut and bruised himself against the stones, and his snarls and growls put more religious thoughts into Smith's head than had ever lodged there before. The bear couldn't get him, but neither could he get the bear. He had nothing to shoot with, neither food nor drink, and yelling at a bear to clear out and go home has no effect in this rarified atmosphere. The mouth of the crevice was ten feet long, and Smith could look over his trail for forty rods or more, no matter at what point the hear was. The animal was walking up and down before the ledge, probably fishing for a plan by which he might get something better than roots for dinner, when the miner caught sight of three Indians creeping along the trail he had made. They had, perhaps, followed it for a mile or more, and must have known that the bear had the first claim. The redskins had just come into view .when they saw the bear, the bear saw them, and Smith saw the whole thing. The bear looked in on Smith in a despairing manner, and then made a bee-line for the red men. They fired at him one a piece, ajid then turned and ran, and after about three minutes' waiting Smith crawled out and made 2.40 time till his breath gave out. — Deadwood Letter to Cincinnati Enquirer.