't come down here any more.
What could a bear live on down here, I'd like to know? Snakes? Well,
bears don't eat snakes."

"Oh!" said she, enlightened.

"There's not a bear in a hundred miles of here," he told her.

"That's comforting knowledge," she said. "You've never told me about the
big grizzly that you killed. Was it long ago?"

"Not so very long," Smith replied, sighing as he saw himself led so far
away from the subject nearest his heart, and despairing of working his
courage up to it again that day.

"It was a big one, wasn't it?"

"Well, I got fifty dollars off of a feller for the hide."

"Tell me about it," she requested.

Inwardly she wished that Smith would go, so she might take a sleep, but
she feared lest he might get back to the subject of houses and wives if
she allowed him to depart from bears, and the historic grizzly in
particular.

"Well, I'll tell you. I didn't kill that bear on purpose," he began. "I
didn't go out huntin' him, and I didn't run after him. If he'd minded
his own business like I minded mine, he'd be alive today for all I'm
concerned."

"Oh, it was an accident?" she asked.

"Part accident," Smith replied. "I was a deputy game-warden in them
days, and a cowboy on the side, up in the Big Horn Valley. A gang of
fellers in knee-pants and yeller leggings come into that country,
shootin' everything that hopped up. Millionaires, I reckon they must 'a'
been, countin' their guns and the way they left game to rot on the
ground. They killed just to kill, and I tracked 'em by the smell of the
carcasses behind 'em. They made a sneak and got into Yellowstone Park,
and there's where I collared 'em. They was all settin' around a fire one
night when I come up to 'em, their guns standin' around. I throwed down
on 'em, and one fool feller he made a grab for a gun. I always was sorry
for that man."

"What did you do to him?" she asked.

"Busted a diamond he had in a ring," said Smith. "Well, they got fines,
them fellers did, when I marched 'em out of there, I'm here to tell you!
If it'd been me that was judge I'd 'a' sent 'em all to jail for life.

"When I was comin' back to the ranch from that trip I met that bear
you've heard so much talk and mostly lies, about. That bear he's the
most slandered bear that ever lived."

"Slandered?"

"That's it. He wasn't wallered to death, choked to death, pounded to
death, nor run down. He was just plain shot in the top of the head."

"What a que