The Bad Boy Tells the Story of the Bears in Yellowstone Park and How
Brave Dad Was.
The old groceryman was down on his knees, with a wet cloth, swabbing up
something from the floor with one hand, while he held his nose with the
other, his back toward the door, when suddenly the door opened with a
bank, striking the old man in the back, knocking him over and landing
him with his head in a basket of strictly fresh eggs, breaking at least
a dozen of them, and filling the air with an odor that was unmistakable;
and the bad boy followed the door into the grocery.
“What's your notion of taking a nap, with a basket of stale eggs for a
pillow,” said the bad boy, as he took the old man by the arm and raised
him up, and looked at him with a grin that was tantalizing. “What is it,
sewer gas? My, but the board of health won't do a thing to you if the
inspector happens in here. Those eggs must have been mislaid by a hen
that had a diseased mind,” and the bad boy took a bottle of cologne out
of the show case and began to sprinkle the floor, and squirted some of
it on the old man's clothes.
“Say, do you know I bought those eggs of a man dressed like a farmer,
who came in here yesterday with his pants in his boots, and smelling as
though he had just come out of his cow stable?” said the old groceryman,
as he took a piece of coffee sack and wiped yellow egg off his whiskers.
“And yet they are old enough to attend caucuses. I tell you that you
have got to watch a farmer the same as you do a crook, or he will get
the best of you. And to think I sold four dozen of those eggs to
a church sociable committee that is going to make ice cream for a
celebration to-night. But what in thunder do you come in here for, like
a toboggin, and knock me all over the floor, into eggs, when you could
come in gently and save a fellow's life; and me a sick man, too. Ever
since that explosion, when we tried to see how they blow up battleships,
I have had nervous prostration, and I am just about sick of this
condemned foolishness. I like to keep posted on current events, and want
to learn how things are going on outside in the world, and I realize
that for an old man to associate with a bright boy like you keeps him
young, but, by ginger, when I think how you have done me up several
times, I sometimes think I better pick out a boy that is not so
strenuous, so you can tell your Pa I rather he wouldn't trade here any
more, for him to keep you away from here. It is hard on me, I know,
but life is dear to all of us, and the life insurance company that I am
contributing to has notified me that if I don't quit having you around
they will cancel my policy. Now, you may say farewell, and get out of
here forever, and I will try and pull along with the cat, and such boys
as come in here to be sociable. Go on now,” and the old groceryman threw
the eggs out in the alley, and washed his whiskers at the sink.
[Illustration: Landed With His Head in a Basket of Strictly Fresh Eggs.]
“Oh, I guess not,” said the boy, as he sat down on a tin cracker box and
began to eat figs out of a box. “I know something about the law myself,
and if you drive me away, you could be arrested for breach of promise,
and arson, and you would go to the penitentiary. It was all I could do
to make the police believe you didn't set this old shebang afire to get
the insurance, and my being here has drawn more custom to your store
than the quality of your goods would warrant. No, sir, I stay right
here, and advise with you, and keep you out of trouble. If I went home
and told dad what you said he would fall in a fit, and would sue you for
damages for ruining my reputation, if he didn't come over here with a
club and take it out of your hide. Dad can stand a good many things,
but when anybody insults one of our family, dad gets violent, and he had
rather kill a man than eat. You read about their finding the body of
a man in an alley, with his head crushed? Well, I don't want to say
anything, but it is rumored that dad was seen near that alley the night
before, and that man chased me once for throwing snow balls at him. We
move in good society, and are looked upon as good citizens, but dad's
temper gets worse every year. Can I stay around here more or less, or do
I have to go out into the world, branded as a criminal, because an old
fool fell into a basket of his own eggs? Say, now, answer up quick,” and
the bad boy sharpened a match with a big dirk knife and picked fig seeds
out of his teeth.
“Oh, sugar, no; you don't need to go,” said the old groceryman, as he
came up to the boy, wiping the soapsuds off, and trying to smile. “I was
only joshing you, and, honestly, I enjoy you. Life is a dreary burden
when you are away. Somehow I have got so my blood gets thick, and my
appetite fails, when you are away from town, and when you play some low
down trick on me, while I seem mad at the time, it does me good, starts
the circulation, and when you go away I seem a new man, and laugh, and
feel like I had been off on a vacation, fishing, or something. It was a
great mistake that I did not have a family of boys to keep me mad part
of the time, because a man that never has anything to make him mad is no
good. I envy your dad in having you around constantly to keep his blood
in circulation. I suppose you are responsible for his being, at his age,
as spry as a boy. He told me when he and you got back from Yellowstone
park last summer that the trip did him a world of good, and that he got
so he could climb a tree--just shin right up like a cat, and that you
were the bravest boy he ever saw, said that you would fight a bear as
quick as eat. Such a boy I am proud to call my friend. What was it about
your fighting bears, single-handed, with no weapon but empty tomato
cans? You ought to be in the history books. Your dad said bravery run in
the family.”
“Oh, get out. Did dad tell you about that bear story?” said the bad boy,
as he sharpened his knife on his boot. “Well, you'd a dide right there,
if you could have seen dad.
[Illustration: “You Ought to Have Seen Dad's Short Legs Carry Him to a
Tree.”]
He is one of these men that is brave sort of intermittent, like folks
have fever. Half the time he is a darn coward, but when you don't expect
it, for instance when the pancakes are burned, or the steak is raw, and
his dyspepsia seems to work just right, he will flare up and sass the
cook, and I don't know of anything braver than that; but ordinarily he
is meek as a lam. I think the stomach has a good deal to do with a man's
bravery. You take a soldier in battle, and if he is hungry he is full of
fight, but you fill him up with baked beans and things and he is willing
to postpone a fight, and he don't care whether there is any fight at all
or not. I think the trip through Yellowstone park took the tar out of
dad. Those geysers throwing up hot water, apparently right out of the
hot place the preachers tell about, seemed to set him to thinking that
may be he had got nearer h--l, on a railroad pass, than he had ever
expected to get. He told me, one day, when we stood beside old Faithful
geyser, and the hot water belched up into the air a hundred feet, that
all it wanted was for the lid to be taken off, and h--l would be yawning
right there, and he was going to try to lead a different life, and if he
ever got out of that park alive he should go home and join every church
in town, and he should advise ministers to get the sinners to take a
trip to the park, if they wanted to work religion into them. Dad would
wake up in the night, at the hotels in the park, when a geyser went off
suddenly, and groan, and cross himself, as he had seen religious people
do, and tell me that in a few days more we would be safe out of the d--n
place, and you would never catch him in it again.
“Well, there is one hotel where a lot of bears come out of the woods in
the evening, to eat the garbage that is thrown out from the hotel. They
are wild bears, all right, but they have got so tame that they come
right near folks, and don't do anything but eat garbage and growl,
and fight each other. The cook told me about it, and said there was no
danger, 'cause you could take a club and scare them into the woods.
“We got to the hotel in the afternoon, and dad went to our room to say
his prayers, and take a nap, and had his supper taken to the room, and
he was so scared at the awful surroundings in the park that he asked a
blessing on the supper, though it was the bummest supper I ever struck.
After dark I told dad we better go out and take a walk and inspect the
scenery, 'cause it was all in the bill, and if you got a bum supper and
didn't get the scenery you were losing money on the deal. I saw the man
emptying the garbage and I knew the bears would be getting in their work
pretty soon, so I took dad and we walked away off, and he talked about
how God had prepared that park as a warning to sinners of what was to
come, and I knew his system was sort of running down, and I knew he
needed excitement, a shock or something to make a reaction, so I steered
him around by the garbage pile.
[Illustration: “I Studied the Bears for Awhile and Let Dad Yell for the
Police.”]
“Say, before he knew it we were right in the midst of about nine bears,
grizzlies, cinnamon bears, black bears, and all of them raised up and
said, 'Whoof!' and they growled, and, by gosh, just as quick as I could
run this knife into your liver, I missed dad. He just yelled: 'Hennery,
this is the limit, and here is where your poor old dad sprints for tall
timber,' and he made for a tree, and I yelled: 'Hurry up, dad!' and he
said: 'I ain't walking, am I?' and you ought to have seen his short legs
carry him to the tree, and help him skin up it. I have seen squirrels
climb trees, when a dog was after them, but they were slow compared
to dad. When he got up to a limb he yelled to me to come on up, as he
wanted to give me a few last instructions about settling his estate,
but I told him I was going to play I was Daniel in the lion's den, so I
studied the bears for a while and let dad yell for the police, and then
I picked up an armful of tomato cans and made a rush for the bears, and
yelled and threw cans at them, and pretty soon every bear went off into
the woods, growling and scrapping with each other, and I told dad to
come down and I would save him at the risk of my life. Dad came down as
quick as he went up, and I took his arm and led him to the hotel, and
when we got to the room he would have collapsed, only I gave him a big
drink of whiskey, and then he braced up and said: 'Hennery, when it
comes to big game, you and I are the wonders of the world. You are
brave, and I am discreet, and we make a team hard to beat.' I told dad
he covered himself with glory, but that he left most of his pants on the
tree, but he said he didn't care for a few pants when he had a boy that
was the bravest that ever came down the pike. When we got home alive he
didn't join the church, but he gave me a gold watch. Well, I'll have to
depart,” and the bad boy went out and left the old groceryman thinking
of the hereafter.