Hi Don,
The bear must have died in the afternoon about 3:00 p.m. - about
the same time the earthquake in the story hit on a later day. Earthquakes
in the Geysers are about twice as common between 3:00 and 4:00 PST
as at any other time of the day. At Ml>=3 the average number of
earthquakes per hour is about 15, but at in the hour between 3 and
4 p.m. there have been 28 recorded. At Ml 3.5 or greater, the average
is about 6 per hour, but between 3 and 4 p.m. there have been 12.
I guess today's event that occurred between 4 and 5 p.m. was a little
late, or were the Indian's using Daylight Savings Time.
Anyway, thanks for the great story, here's some data that ought
to get you folks thinking about the WHY - what kind of triggering
mechanism would lead to this pattern of earthquake occurrence
sharply peaking at 3-4 in the afternoon?
Put your thoughts to keyboard and post your ideas.

Table: Number of events in the Geysers region per hour
of day since 1930. (UT hour; PST = UT - 8 hours).
First column is number of events in the Geysers region recorded between
1930 and 2001 starting at UT hour in second column and for the next hour.
Columns 3 and 4 are similar data for Ml>=3.

M>=3.5 M>=3.0
#E HR #E HR
7 00 14 00
9 01 17 01
4 02 15 02
2 03 9 03
7 04 20 04
5 05 19 05
4 06 10 06
4 07 13 07
5 08 14 08
6 09 10 09
6 10 14 10
4 11 17 11
4 12 13 12
4 13 14 13
8 14 18 14
8 15 16 15
5 16 14 16
7 17 12 17
7 18 20 18
5 19 13 19
2 20 15 20
5 21 17 21
7 22 18 22
12 23 28 23