Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-10-21
ESPECIAL TELEGRAM TO THE DISPATCH: !:


SCRANTON, October 2O.-Three years ago
last spring, Obadiah Cheesebrough, who
lives at the base of Peachstone mountain, in
Springbrook township, captured pair of
male cub bears in a ravine near Monument
creek. The mother bear overhauled and
tackled him before he had gone far, and
after hard fight he killed her. Cheese
brough's left arm and side were badly torn
in his tussel with the old bear, and the scars
are there yet. The cubs got away while he
was engaged in the conflict, but the next
day Cheesebrough's sons, Harvey and
Eugene, recaptured the cubs and took them
home.
When they were few weeks old Cheese
brough marked the young bears, so that he
could claim them if they ever strayed away.
He had an old branding iron with figure
6 on the end of it, and on the left shoulder
of one of the cubs he branded that figure.
Then he inverted the iron and burned
figure on the right shoulder of the other
cub. He hadn't named the cubs vet, and he
decided to call them Six and Nine.
THE CUBS BECOME PETS
From that time on the names were ap-
piled to the young bears so often by all of
Mr.. Cheesebrough's folks, that the little
animals soon got to know them, responding
to their respective titles as readily as two
intelligent dogs. During the first year Six
and Nine we're great pets on Mr.. Cheese
brough's place, and in the daytime they had
the freedom of the premises. At night they
were corfned in pen.
Last fall both bears began to grow cross
and unmanageable. Before then they had
been friendly to Mr.. Cheesebrough's dogs,
but the y became so ferocious after time,
that they nearly killed his fox hound one
day, and it was not safe for the dogs to 60
near them. Nine was the more ferocious
and unruly. Last October he killed a
large rabbit dog owned bv Harold Wharton,
and later on he squeezed the life out of one
of Mr.. Cheesebrough's shoats and devoured
it. Six wandered away one day in the fall
and captured a sheep from George Board.
mans field, lugged it into clump of
bushes and feasted on it.
LITTLE TOO COSTLY.
They were both getting to be altogether
too expensive pets to suit the notions of Mr..
Cheesebrough, and he concluded to confne
them until the latter part of January and
then butcher them and sell their hides and
meat. Early in December he built a strong
log pen and placed Six and Nine in it. He
removed the straps from their necks, let
them have full swing, and fed them regu-
larly. They grew crosser and crosser, and
no dog veutured to go near the pen. The
bears did not fatten very rapidly in their
narrow quarters, and confinement made
them uneasy.
On the night OF January the bears broke
out oil their pen and disappeared. 1t was a
rainy, warm night, and there was no snow
on the ground. On the morning of the 10th,
as soon as their owner found that his bears
had broken out and run away, he got a
party together and went in search of them.
Everybody in the township knew the bears
by sight and name, but not one of the
searching party got glimpse Of either Six
or Nine In the long days hunt.
TRACKS OF THE FUGITIvEs
were found in the muddy road here and
there, within half a mile of Mr.. Cheese
brough's house, but the trail was lost on the
upland and it was never found again.
Harvey and Eugene searched high and
low for Six and Nine atintervals during the
next fortnight, and then they gave it up, in
the hope that the bears would come around
of their own accord when they got tired of
leading a wild life. But the bears did not
get tired, it seemed, for they never returned.
Last Wednesday Isaac Horton and his
spaniel, Nick, were tramping through the
wilds of Panther creek. Horton carried a
double barreled breech-loading shotgun,
and was on his way to wintergreen patch
where he knew partridges to be plentiful.
The dog was out OF sight good deal of the
time, running here and there through the
brush and over logs, and occasionally bark
pered away from him. Horton let Nick
have his own way. and the dog soon strayed
into an old windfall and
BEGAN TO YELP
as though he was being murdered. The
hunter clambered over the fallen trees as
fast as he could, and found that the dog had
run foul of big bear underneath large
log. Horton came face to face with the
bear, but by that time Nick had ceased to
yelp, and the bear was so busily engaged in
finishing the dog that he didn't see Horton,
and Horton emptied both barrels into the
bears face and eyes.
The two charges of shot blinded the bear,
Dut IL maze q lunge, uttered groan ana
knocked Horton off his feet He got up In
a hurry, while the bear was believing and
foundering in the brush and among the
logs, slipped two more cartridges in his gun,
blazed away and blew the left side of the
bears face of. That used the bear up so
much that Horton was able to cut his
throat.
AS soon as the brute had bled to death,
Horton yanked him around by his hind
legs and pulled him across log. In doing
this
he NOTICED A MARK
on the right shoulder Looking closer, he
found that the bare spot was in the shape of
a figure 9, and he then realized for the first
time that he had slain one of Mr.. CHEESE
brough's runaway bears. The spot where
he killed Nine was AZ miles from Mr..
Cheesebrough's house. Horton gave the
skin to the bears former owner and kept
the carcass for his own use and that OF his
neighbors.
An Opeu-Air Speak, Easy.
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