This painting depicts an event that Russell never saw but later heard about from friends. In 1904, during a spring roundup in the Milk River country of northeastern Montana, a large bear was seen harassing a group of saddle horses that had strayed from the roundup’s remuda. The bear was intercepted, so the story went, by three cowboys. The youngest cowboy attempted to rope the animal first, but he missed and his horse spooked and commenced bucking. The second and third cowboys, more experienced hands, were successful in hog-tying the bear, after which they were able to dispatch it with large rocks. In the painting, Russell has placed the desperate scene in a beautiful setting, where high scrublands give way to distant mountains and valleys bathed in atmospheric blues. The bear, a ferocious-looking grizzly, is especially well-handled. Thirty-five years after this event took place, a few of the surviving cowboys in the outfit that encountered the bear set the record straight to a local newspaper. It seems the real event occurred in the Larb Hills south of Saco, Montana, where the surrounding countryside was not quite so glorious as in Russell’s painting. The offending bear, as it turns out, was a much smaller cinnamon bear, not the more formidable grizzly. Furthermore, the riders cornered the bear in a dry coulee, not out in the open. The animal was indeed roped, and the weapons used to kill it included rocks. But why not shoot it? Because, they said in unison, none of them carried a gun that day. But none of this mattered to Russell, or to the people who saw his painting. Putting the event in a grander setting, making the bear a more fearsome beast, and showing the cool skill of cowboys who would rather use ropes than the guns at their sides was all in a day’s work for an artist who knew how to tell a good story.