Badly wounded, would Penrose survive?

Editor’s note: When we left you last week, C.B. Penrose had shot a white young grizzly in what is now the Great Bear Wilderness. The sow of that cub went after Penrose, and while he was also able to shoot her as well, she badly mauled him. The story continues…

By JOHN FRALEY

Penrose’s movement drew a renewed attack from the grizzly. The bear bit through the doctor’s felt hat and into the scalp, then bit Penrose’s face so severely that one of the bear’s canines penetrated the doctor’s cheek and snapped off one of his teeth. The bear stopped the attack, and this time Penrose lay still.

The huge sow crossed the creek and walked up the opposite bank about 20 yards away. She leaned against a small, stunted tree and slumped over. Penrose could see blood oozing from a wound on the sow’s left hip and realized that one of his shots had wounded her mortally. Unfortunately for the doctor, the bear had plenty of energy to nearly kill him before she became weak from loss of blood.

As Penrose sat up, covered in blood, he saw that the third bear was still close by. Amazingly, in spite of his severe injuries and worsening shock, the doctor was able to pick up the Mauser, aim, and squeeze the trigger. This time the hammer clicked on an empty chamber. The doctor felt his pockets for more shells but his remaining ammunition had been lost in the struggle. Although the gun didn’t fire, luckily for Penrose the third bear growled, turned, and loped away. The entire episode had lasted only moments.

Arthur Stiles heard Penrose’s first shots, thinking that the doctor had bagged game. But when more gunshots echoed from Penrose’s direction Stiles became alarmed and hurried over to find the doctor. As Stiles came around a “jumbled mass of boulders” he was shocked by what he saw.

Stiles said that he saw the doctor in shock, “wandering aimlessly around in the canyon bed.” Penrose had lost his gun and his hat. His coat was gone and his pants were torn in pieces. The doctor’s head and neck were covered with blood and he held his left arm in his bloody right hand. The pitiful man moaned, “Water, water.”

Stiles ran to the small stream on the other side of the rocks and brought a cowboy hat full of water to the thirsty doctor. As the injured man drank, Stiles could see water pouring through a gash in his right cheek. Penrose told Stiles that he was “all in,” and that he had “a fight with a bear.”

Ragged strips of flesh hung from a long, two-inch-wide gash on the doctor’s left thigh. One of the bear’s teeth had ripped his throat, and five gaping punctures marked his chest. Penrose’s left wrist was twisted and broken with bones protruding from the “quivering flesh.” His scalp was torn. Tearing strips of cotton signal cloth and using simple first aid items he had with him, Stiles bandaged the worst of the doctor’s wounds. From the doctor’s description and from looking quickly over the scene of the disaster, Stiles got a good idea of what had happened.

The two men slowly made their way back to the horses. Stiles wrapped his “cowboy slicker” around the doctor and helped him up on his horse. Stiles mounted Penrose’s horse and led the horse carrying the injured man over the 1.5 trail-less miles back toward the Penrose party’s camp. The doctor bravely tried to hide his tremendous pain. Stiles hid his dismay and growing sense of doom about the doctor’s chances. After much difficulty, they reached the canvas teepees just as the evening light faded.

The doctor’s disastrous condition stunned the men anxiously waiting at camp. Stiles was elected to perform amateur surgery. Ironically, Penrose had earlier published a much-cited article on antiseptic surgery and was considered an expert on the subject. In Stiles, Penrose was lucky that such a calm and capable man was available and willing to take on such a responsibility. The men built a large, bright fire of pitch pine to provide light and warmth and laid the doctor on a ground cloth. Luckily, the doctor had brought a surgical kit on the trip, and he was cognizant enough to direct Stiles on how to stitch and patch up his wounds. Penrose injected himself with a “quarter of a grain of morphia.” Stiles applied bichloride of mercury on each wound to slow the infection that would inevitably come to the bites and gashes.

Stiles examined the doctor’s crushed left wrist and huddled with the other men to decide how to treat it. They agreed that the best approach would be to extract the bone shards, which stuck out at various angles. Penrose told Stiles to have at it, thinking he could endure the pain without anesthetics. But as Stiles began, the doctor passed out from the intense pain. The men changed their minds after that, and simply bound up the wrist again in signal cloth and plaster. It was 1 a.m. according to Stiles’ watch. Stiles realized that any further medical work would have to be done by a real surgeon, if they could get Penrose out of the wilderness alive.

During that long night, Stiles asked himself over and over again how they would ever manage to get Dr. Penrose out of the rugged mountains. He decided to “run a hazard” and take an unheard-of route. The rescue party would plunge downslope to the east through the thick vegetation and cliffs on the opposite side of the range to reach the Middle Fork Flathead River and the railroad that ran along it. The distance in that direction was only about five miles, but nearly 4,000 feet of treacherous elevation had to be negotiated. At first light, Stiles and the little rescue party left the camp and crossed the pass into the head of Rescue Creek. The men had to cover much of the distance on foot, while leading the horses. In this manner the party cut and scrambled through the buckbrush and timber, fighting their way down nearly 1,000 feet in elevation for each mile of distance. By dark, to Stiles’ great relief, they reached the bottom of the Middle Fork canyon and the railroad. Stiles said he could not have “cut another tree, or broken another brush.”

The party quickly mounted and traveled 2 miles west along the tracks to reach the little station house at the remote siding of Nyack. Stiles and his party arrived about 9 p.m., almost exactly 14 hours after they left the high camp. Nyack’s entire population was on hand: the stationmaster and his wife, who prepared dinner for the hungry, exhausted travelers.

The next morning, the men flagged down the eastbound Great Northern Limited, which the Penrose brothers gratefully boarded. Stiles’ gamble had worked—Charles Penrose was now in good hands and headed to the Mayo Hospital in Minnesota.

The Stiles-Penrose trip was a watershed event in the Middle Fork drainage, literally putting the area on the map. The incident influenced Stiles as he assigned names to the area’s features, including Great Bear Mountain, Great Bear Creek, Mount Penrose, and Rescue Creek. The three blond bears turned out to be the inspiration not only for some of these features but eventually of the Great Bear Wilderness established much later.

The great white bear in the high basin left her mark on Penrose and made history. And thanks to Arthur Stiles, the Geological Survey man, Penrose left his mark on the Great Bear.

This story was excepted from the book, “Wild River Pioneers,” second edition published in June, 2021, by Farcountry Press (1-800-821-3874).