Pecks Bad Boy with the Cowboys | Page 4

minute if you yelled at him. Pa made up
his mind he would yell all right enough, if we came up to a grizzly.
Well, we didn't sleep much that night, 'cause Pa kept practicing on his
yell to scare a grizzly, for fear he would forget the words, and when
they called us in the morning Pa was the poorest imitation of a man
going out to test his bravery that I ever saw. While the Indians were
getting ready to go out to a canyon and turn the dogs loose to round up
a bear, Pa got a big knife and was sharpening it, so he could rip the bear

from Genesis to Revelations. After breakfast the chief and the Carlisle
Indian, and the big game hunter, and the cowman and I went out about
two miles, to the mouth of the canyon, where it was very narrow, and
they stationed Pa by a big rock, right where the bear would have to pass;
the rest of us got up on a bench of the canyon, where we could see Pa
be brave, and the young Indians went up about a mile, and started the
dogs. Well, Pa was a sight, as he stood there waiting for the bear, so he
could cuff its ears, and rip it open, right in sight of the chief, and skin it;
but he was nervous, and we could see that his legs trembled when he
heard the dogs bark up the canyon. I yelled to Pa to think of Teddy
Roosevelt, and Daniel Boone, and Buffalo Bill, and set his teeth so they
would not chatter and scare the bear, but Pa yelled back: "Never you
mind, I will kill my bear in my own way, but you can make up your
mind to have bear meat for supper."
Pretty soon the big game hunter said: "There he comes, sure's you are
born," and we looked up the canyon, and there was something coming,
as big as a load of hay, with bristles sticking up a foot high on its back,
and its mouth was open, and it was loping right towards pa. Gee, but I
was proud of pa, to see him sharpening his knife on his boot leg, but
when the great animal got within about a block of pa, the great father
seemed to have a streak of yellow, for he dropped his knife and yelled:
"Git, Ephraim," in a loud voice, but Ephraim came right along, and
didn't git with any great suddenness. When the bear got within about
four doors of Pa, he saw the great father, and stood up on his hind legs,
and looked as big as a brewery horse, and he opened his mouth and said:
"Woof," just like that. That was too much for my Pa, who began to
shuck his clothes, and then started on a run towards the mouth of the
canyon. The bear looked around as much as to say: "Well, what do you
think of that?" and we watched Pa sprinting toward the Indian camp
like a scared wolf.
[Illustration: The Grilly Looked as Big as a Brewery Horse.]
The big game hunter put a few bullets in the bear where they would do
the most good, and killed it, and we went down in the canyon and
skinned it, and took the meat and hide to camp, where we found Pa
under a bed in a squaw's tepee, making grand hailing signs of distress,
and trying to tell them about his killing a bear by letting it run after him,
so it would tire itself out and die of heart failure.

When we found Pa he had come out from under the bed, and was
looking at the hide of the bear to find the place where he hit it with the
knife, as he said he could see that the only chance for him to kill the
bear was to throw the knife at it from a distance, 'cause the bear was
four times as big as any bear he had ever killed. Pa took out a handful
of gold pieces and distributed them among the Indians, and told the
Carlisle Indian to explain to the tribe that the great father had killed the
bear by hypnotism, and they all believed it except the chief, who
seemed skeptical, for he said: "Great father heap brave man like a
sheep. Go play seven- up with squaws." Poor Pa wasn't allowed to talk
with the men all day, 'cause the old chief said he was a squaw man. Pa
says they don't seem to realize that a man can be brave unless he allows
himself to be killed by a bear, but he says he will show them that a