right up against a big brown bear in the dark. He was coming down
the road and was in pretty considerable of a hurry, too--going down to
the butcher's corral for supper I reckon--and we stopped about three
feet apart. 'What you adoin' of here,' says I. 'Seems to me you're
prowling around mighty permiscuous, buntin' inter people on the State
stage road. You git inter the bresh,' says I, 'where you belong or
I'll kick a few dents into you. Now don't stand here argifying the
pint,' says I, just as important as if I was the Gardeen of the Valley,
which I wasn't. 'Scoot, skedaddle, vamoos the ranch, git off the
earth,' I says, 'if you ain't aimin' to git your head punched.'

"Well, sir, he stood there a minute with his head cocked sidewise,
kinder grunted once as if he was saying 'good-night,' and turned off
the road into the brush and went about his business, and I poked along
up to the Stoneman. 'Course I can't swear that he knew just what I
said, but he ketched the general drift of the argyment all right, what
you might call the prepoort of my remarks, and he knowed he hadn't no
case worth fighting about.

"I remember once when Jim Duncan and me was ketched out in a snowstorm
up near the head of Alder Creek, and lost each other in the dark. I
knew Jim would take care of himself and it was no use tramping around,
so I hunted a hole to sleep in. I found a place under a rock just big
enough for me, where the snow didn't blow in, and I curled up on some
dry leaves and snoozed off in no time. By and by something touched my
face and I woke up, and there was a bear poking his head in and
wondering if there was room for two. There wasn't no room and I don't
like to sleep with bears nohow. Bears are all right in their place and
I don't hold to no prejudices, but I'm notional about some things and I
never could stand bears in my bed; they smell worse than Indians. So I
says to that bear, which was looking mighty wishful into my snug
quarters, 'Git along out of this; I was here first,' and I reached up
and fetched him a back-handed slap on the nose. You'd orter heard him
sneeze as he moseyed off. Last thing I remembered when I turned over
and went to sleep was him a sneezing as he wandered around looking for
another hole.

"If that had been a she-bear, of course I'd have crawled out and gave
her my place like a gentleman. You never know what a she--bear, or any
other kind of she, is going to do next, and the best