Recalling the death of Slim Link

Note: Following is a shortened version of a scary but true story I wrote for “Sports Afield” in March 1965. There are other versions. North Fork legend Ralph Thayer told me his version, and I also interviewed Chance Beebe’s aging widow. No one knows all the details. This came from what I was told by those involved.

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It doesn’t matter now about the immediate cause of his death, for Slim Link was doomed the minute he decided to kill a grizzly; and any way you look at it, Slim’s last hours on earth would make a trip through hell seem easy.

In the winter of 1911-12, Slim and his partner, Chance Beebe, wintered near the Montana-Canada border and ran illegal trap lines into British Columbia wilderness. They’d barely established camp in the upper Flathead when a giant snow slide came booming off the peaks, burying their small cabin, food and most of the traps. Discouraged but game, they made another 50-mile trip to Belton getting new supplies, then back to settle in for the winter.

Headquartering in a crude 8-by-10 cabin, they built up a good cache of prime mink, otter, beaver and pine martin pelts. They both liked a good time, especially Link, so they did make another trip out for supplies and a little high living in April. Upon return, trapping slowed down, and after catching only four beaver in a week, Beebe said he had to leave to do “proving up” work on his homestead down river.

In late April, hungry grizzlies just out of hibernation were trolling the trap line eating carcasses. The last thing Beebe told Link was, “Don’t go trying to shoot one of those damned big bears with that pistol of yours. It just ain’t enough gun to get the job done.”

Slim Link didn’t wait long after Chance left before he came up with a plan for killing a grizzly with a set-gun trap near their cabin. He constructed a V-shaped pole runway, leading to a log between two trees, and baited with beaver carcasses. He then wired his .41-caliber Colt pistol to the log and built a treadle in the narrowest space. Any animal stepping on the treadle would pull a cord attached to the trigger of the anchored pistol. A wounded bear might shoot itself more than once by re-triggering the double action revolver in those close quarters.

Back in the cabin with his little mongrel dog, Link got meat frying for a meal he would never eat. The gun went off. He waited several minutes but hearing no more shots, headed for the trap. There was fresh blood in the runway, and the snow and ground were torn up by grizzly claws, but nothing was in sight. He peered into the darkening forest, then carefully avoiding the treadle, the nervous man began unfastening wires holding the gun to the log.

As he freed the last wire, Link saw or heard something that panicked him into signing his own death warrant. It must have been close, because he desperately grabbed the barrel of the revolver to jerk it from the log, but the cord, still attached to the trigger, did what it was designed to do ... fired the pistol.

The slug went in three inches below his belt buckle and exited two inches higher in his back. The dog may have distracted the bear, but somehow Link made it back to the cabin, bolted the door and fell on his bunk. He knew the bleeding had to be stopped, so he tore pieces from his shirt, twisting them into plugs.

Slim was a strong young man, a veteran of the Spanish American War, and he probably thought he might make it out alive. There was food and water in the cabin, and Beebe might be coming back up in a week or two. He found he had to make bigger plugs for the wounds. As night descended, he heard the dog barking out by the creek, then up on the hill. After a while, he likely heard the frightened dog whining outside the door for a minute, then move off, giving way to another sound of something big moving around, scratching at the door, then growling and digging at the base log.

Ike Chance was an older man who had recently homesteaded in the North Fork on the land that is now in the northwest corner of Glacier National Park. His cabin was eight miles south of the border, and Ike became concerned when Link’s gaunt dog wandered down to his place. He knew something was wrong, and having talked to Chance Beebe a week before, knew Link was still up at the trap line. He got word on down river, and soon Chance Beebe and a friend started for the remote site.

At the cabin, they found an unreal scene of terror. Along the creek were fresh wallows, where grizzlies had been bedding and working off their long winter coats. They located the now rusting revolver with the deadly cord still linking the trigger to the treadle. At the cabin, the log door had been torn off, a pool of dried blood was beneath the bunk, pathetically twisted plugs were scattered on the dirt floor, and a discarded pair of crimson-brown pants showed the bullet’s path. A hurried search turned up a human pelvis bone and skull about 50 yards out in the timber. The two men decided to leave what they considered a dangerous situation,

A couple of miles below the border, they met four more homesteaders coming up on horses. Since three of those men had powerful rifles, the group decided to return to the scene. With loaded guns handy, they gathered all the chewed skeletal remains to be found and put them in a flour sack, cleaned out the cabin area and left.

Up until his death in mid-century, Chance Beebe sometimes talked of his partner Slim Link and he used to say, “I’m sure Slim died before the grizzly broke into the cabin. The doctors told me, only a super kind of man could have made it back to the cabin with that kind of wound. But I don’t think even Slim could have lived too long after he got there.”

Chance was only guessing, and when we think of Slim Link lying there in the night, stuffing plugs into his burning stomach and back while the grizzly raged around the tiny cabin, you can’t help thinking he didn’t live too long. But then, you and I are just like Chance Beebe. None of us really know how long the grizzly waited to finish ... what Slim had started.

G. George Ostrom is a national award-winning Hungry Horse News columnist. He lives in Kalispell.