A DENFUL OF GRIZZLIES.
A man from San Gabriel Canyon came into Los Angeles and told bear
stories to the Professor and the Professor told them to other people.
The main point of the man's tale was that he had found a den inhabited
by two Grizzlies of great size and fierce aspect. He had seen the
bears and was mightily afraid of them, and he wanted somebody to go up
there and exterminate them so that he might work his mining claim
unmolested and unafraid. The Professor, being guileless and confiding,
believed the tale, and he tried to oblige the bear-haunted miner by
promoting an expedition of extermination. Seventeen men replied to his
overtures with the original remark that they "Hadn't lost any bears."
Since 1620 that has been the standard bear joke of the North American
continent, and its immortality proves that it was the funniest thing
that ever was said.
[Illustration: He Had Seen the Bears.]
At last the Professor found a man who did not know the joke, and that
man straightway consented to go to the rescue of the bear-beleaguered
denizen of San Gabriel Canyon. He and three others went into the
mountains with guns loaded for bear, which was an error of
judgment--they should have been loaded for the tellers of bear tales.
An expedition properly outfitted to hunt bear liars rather than bear
lairs could load a four-horse wagon with game in the San Gabriel Canyon.
Old Bill, who had lived in the canyon many years, sorrowfully admitted
that the canyon's reputation for harboring persons of unimpeachable
veracity was not what it should be. The man-who-was-afraid-of-bears
could not be depended upon to give bed-rock facts about bears, but he,
Old Bill, was a well of truth in that line and had some good horses and
burros to let to bear hunters. He, Old Bill, had killed many bears in
the canyon, but had left enough to provide entertainment for other
hunters. His last bear killing was heaps of fun. He ran across three
in a bunch, shot one, drowned another in the creek, and jumped upon the
third, and "just stomped him to death." As for the man up the creek,
who pretended to have found a den of bears, he had been telling that
story for so many years that he probably believed it, but nobody else
did. The man up the creek had the nerve to pretend that his favorite
pastime was fighting Grizzlies with a butcher knife, and anybody
acquainted with bears ought to size up that sort of a man easy enough,
said Old Bill.
The man up the creek, the original locator of the denful of Grizzlies,
had his opinion of Old Bill as a slayer of bears. It was notorious in
the canyon that the only bear Old Bill ever saw was a fifty-pound cub
that stole a string of trout from under Bill's nose, waded the creek
and went away while Old Bill was throwing his gun into the brush and
hitching frantically along a fallen spruce under the impression that he
was climbing a tree. As for himself, he was getting too old and
rheumatic to hunt, but he had had a little sport with bears in his
time. He recalled with especial glee a little incident of ten or a
dozen years ago. He had been over on the Iron Fork hunting for a stray
mule, and he was coming back through the canyon after dark. It was
darker than a stack of black cats in the canyon, and when he bumped up
against a bear in the trail he couldn't see to get in his favorite
knife play--a slash to the left and a back-handed cut to the right,
severing the tendons of both front paws--and so he made a lunge for
general results, and then shinned up a sycamore tree. To his great
surprise he heard the bear scrambling up the tree behind him, and he
crawled around to the other side of the trunk and straddled a big
branch in the fork, where he could get a firm seat and have the free
use of his right arm. He could just make out the dark bulk of the bear
as the beast crawled clumsily up the slanting trunk in front of him,
and as the bear's left arm came around and clasped the trunk, he
chopped at it with his heavy knife. The bear roared with pain.
Instantly he lunged furiously at the bear's body just under the arm
pit, driving the knife to the hilt two or three times, and with a moan
the beast let go all holds and fell heavily to the ground.
For a minute all was silent. Then the growling began again, and he
heard the scratching of claws upon the tree. In another moment the
dark bulk of the bear appeared again in front of him, and again he
drove the knife to the hilt into his body and felt the hot blood spurt
over his hand. Clawing, scratching and yelling, the bear slid back
down the tree and bumped heavily on the ground, but in a moment resumed
the attack and climbed the tree as quickly as if he were fresh and
unwounded.
The man up the tree was puzzled to account for such remarkable vitality
and perseverance, but he braced himself for the combat, and at the
proper moment chopped viciously at the bear's forearm and felt the
blade sink into the bone. This time he got in three good hard lunges
under the arm, and when the bear fell "ker-flop" he had no doubt that
the fight was ended.
But there never was another such bear as that one. It wasn't a minute
before the whole thing had to be done over again, and the man up the
tree varied the performance by reaching around and giving the bear a
whack in the neck that nearly cut his head off. This sort of thing was
repeated at intervals for two or three hours, but at last the attacks
ceased, and all was still at the foot of the tree. The man was weary,
and to tell the truth a little rattled. He did not deem it wise to
come off his perch and take any chance of trouble on the ground, so he
strapped himself to the branch with his belt and fell asleep.
It was gray dawn when he awoke. He rubbed his eyes and looked down at
the ground. Then he rubbed them again and pinched himself and glanced
around at the rocks and trees to make sure that he was not in a trance.
He said to himself, being a reader of the poets, "Can such things be,
or is visions about?"
It was no dream and the man up the canyon said it was no lie. Lying
about the foot of the sycamore were nine dead bears, weltering in their
gore.
Which explains why the Don and the Colonel and the rest of the
expedition of extermination returned forthwith to Los Angeles without
having seen a bear. There are no more bears. The man up the canyon
killed them all years ago.