184 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

trees served as corner posts for a pen built
of twenty-inch logs, “gained” at the cor-
ners and fastened together with stout oak
pins. The pen was about twelve feet long,
four feet high and five feet wide inside,
and the door was made of pine logs sunk
into the ground and wedged and pinned se-
curely. A door of four-inch planks, so
heavy that it required three men to raise it,
was Set in front, between oak guides pinned
vertically to the trees and suspended by
a rope running over a pulley and back to
a trigger that engaged with a pivoted stick
of oak, to which the bait was to be fast-
ened. Five days were consumed in the con-
struction of the trap, and while the work
was going on a bear visited the camp at
night and stampeded all the saddle and
pack animals out of the canyon.

A German prospector named Sparkuhle,
who was staying temporarily in the camp,
was cured of a severe case of skepticism
that night. Sparkuhle believed nothing
that he could not see, and he declared, with