and I sat still and trembling, wondering if my last moment had come. For
a second he glared at me and I could note the little green electric
lamp in each of his eyes. Then he slowly turned and picked up--a large
tomato-can.
"Goodness!" I thought, "is he going to throw that at me?" But he
deliberately licked it out, dropped it, and took another, paying
thenceforth no heed whatever either to me or to Johnny, evidently
considering us equally beneath his notice.
I backed slowly and respectfully out of his royal presence, leaving him
in possession of the garbage, while Johnny kept on caterwauling from his
safety-perch.
What became of Grumpy the rest of that day I do not know. Johnny, after
bewailing for a time, realized that there was no sympathetic hearer of
his cries, and therefore very sagaciously stopped them. Having no mother
now to plan for him, he began to plan for himself, and at once proved
that he was better stuff than he seemed. After watching with a look of
profound cunning on his little black face, and waiting till the Grizzly
was some distance away, he silently slipped down behind the trunk, and,
despite his three-leggedness, ran like a hare to the next tree, never
stopping to breathe till he was on its topmost bough. For he was
thoroughly convinced that the only object that the Grizzly had in life
was to kill him, and he seemed quite aware that his enemy could not
climb a tree.
Another long and safe survey of the Grizzly, who really paid no heed to
him whatever, was followed by another dash for the next tree, varied
occasionally by a cunning feint to mislead the foe. So he went dashing
from tree to tree and climbing each to its very top,--although it might
be but ten feet from the last, till he disappeared in the woods. After,
perhaps, ten minutes, his voice again came floating on the breeze, the
habitual querulous whining which told me he had found his mother and had
resumed his customary appeal to her sympathy.
{Illustration}