to listen to a no-account hired man like me, so he kept
on a-going for the big tree.

"I figured, and figured blamed quick, that the bear would tag him just
about the time he tagged the tree, and so, hoping to create a diversion,
I whanged away at the bear's tail, him running plumb away from me. I
was real successful, for I created it all right. When he felt that
carload of lead slide up under his skin he braced hisself, slid and
wheeled, looking for the son-of-a-gun what done it, and he saw me pouring
powder hell-bent down my gun. He must 'a' knowed that I was the real
business end of the partnership, and that he'd have trouble a-plenty if
he let me finish my job, for he came at me like a bullet.

"'Climb a _little_ tree! Climb a _little_ tree!' yelled Davy Crockett from
his perch in his two-foot-through oak.

"I wasn't in no joyous frame of mind when a nine-foot grizzly was due in
the next mail, but I just had to laugh at his advice when I sized up his
layout. As I jumped to one side the bear slid past, trying awful hard to
stop, and he was doing real well, too. As he turned I slipped on some of
that green grass, and thought as how the Old Man would have to get another
puncher.

"'I ain't never going to peter out with a tenderfoot looking on if I can
help it!' I said to myself, and I jerked loose my six-shooter, shooting
offhand and some hasty. It was just a last hope, the kick of a dying
man's foot, but it fetched him, blamed if it didn't! He went down in a
heap and clawed about for a spell, but I put five more in him, and then
sat down. Did you ever notice how long it takes a grizzly to die? I
loaded my gun in a hurry, the sweat pouring down my face, for that was
one of the times it ain't no disgrace to be some scared, which I was.

"'Is he dead?' called Davy Crockett from his tree, hopeful-like and some
anxious.

"'He is,' I said, 'or, leastawise, he was.'

"Davy was a sight. He was all skinned up from his clinch with the tree,
though how he used his face getting up is more than I can tell. And he
was some white and unsteady. He had all the hunting he wanted, and he
managed to say that he was glad he hadn't come out alone, and that he
reckoned I was right about his guns after all. So we took a last look at
the bear and lit out for the ranch, where I told the boys to go out and
drag our game home."

Jim knocked the ashes from his pipe and began to fill it anew, acting as
though the story was finished, but B