hing,
watch licks and kill a deer or two, jerk the meat and have a general
good time.

I was allowed to go on one of these expeditions, and the first night
the men watched one or two licks and one of the men killed a deer,
but I had to stay in camp that night with a promise that I should
watch the second night.

During the first night we heard wolves howl away upon the hills. The
next morning the men talked very mysteriously about the wolves and
said that it would not be safe to watch the licks that night, that no
deer would come to the licks as long as the wolves were around. I
took it all in and said nothing, but was determined to watch a lick
that night. Finally one of the men, John Duell by name, said that I
could watch the lick that he had and he would stay in camp. The one
that I was to watch was only a short distance from the clearing. When
the sun was about one-half hour high, I took the old shot gun, this
time loaded with genuine buck shot and climbed the Indian ladder to
the scaffold which was built about twenty feet from the ground in a
hemlock tree.

I sat quiet until sundown and no deer came. I thought I would tie the
gun in the notches in the limbs, which brought the gun in proper
range to kill the deer in the lick, should it come after dark. I got
one string tied around the barrel and the limb when a slight noise to
my left caused me to look in that direction and I saw a dark object
standing in the edge of the little thicket, which I took to be a
black creature I had seen down near the clearing when I came to the
lick. My thoughts were that I would tie the breech of the gun fast to
the limb, and then I would climb down and stone the animal away, so I
went on tying the gun fast. On looking up I saw that the supposedly
black heifer had turned out to be a black bear, and that it was going
to go above the lick and not into it. My knife was out in an instant
and the next moment I had the strings that held the gun cut. I raised
it carefully to my face and about this time the bear stopped, turned
his head around and looked back in the direction he had come. This
was my chance, and I fired both barrels at his head and shoulders,
and immediately there was a snorting, snarling, rolling and tumbling
of the bear, but the maneuvers of the bear was no comparison to the
screams and shouts that came from me. I was still making more noise
than a band of Indians when Mr. Duell arrived on the scene and took
in the situ