St. Landry democrat. (Opelousas, La.) 1878-1894, 1888-03-10

and pinned it to the tree. This was
coming to pretty close quarters. The
bear uttered a hoarse roar of rage, and,
reaching up close to my resting-place
with the other paw, she seized the
! bowie knife between her teeth and
snapped it in two. This movement was
done so quickly that had no time to
recover the bowie knife. I was now
practically within the bear reach, and
the chances were all against my being
able to stand her off with the club
where was. Quicker than it takes to
tell about it I swung myself up into the
next roosting-place above.
In the mean tine the cub had ven
tured down to this point, and had to
vacate to make room for me. He didn' t
seem in any particular hurry about it;
in fact, the little whelp see med half
| inclined to take hand in the fight
now; he seemed to realize that they
had me cornered up, and he only
moved away few feet. l had barely
got settled in this new position when
the bears paw and the club were at it
again I managed to fetch her another
vicious rap over the head; but the blow
only made her roar and duck and
scatter blood and foam all over me and
the tree. At this stage of the fight she
looked a fiend incarnate. After fencing
while for an opening, I made out to
hit her another sockdolager across the
snout. hit her so hard this time that
splinters flew off the club, but it only
made her savager and more dangerous
than ever. / tried hard to jab her in
the eye, but you might as we'll try to
poke a fencing master in the eye with
stick as bear, even if it only has one
paw at liberty. At last she grabbed the
stick, and quicker than chain lightning
she wrenched it out of my grasp.
There was only one thing to be done
now, and that was to get from between
her and the cub just as lively as posi-
BILE. At the imminent risk of breaking
my neck skurried along the nearest
branch on all tours until the bough
bent and swayed with the tension. The
old bear was blind with fury, and
started out after me, but rs the branch
began to snap and splinter she funked,
and drew herself back to the fork. A
moment later she was joined by the
cub, who threw its paws about her
neck and began licking her bleeding
mouth. The old bears fury seemed to
cool off wonderfully at finding her cub
uninjured, and after soldering over it
awhile they both started down the tree
The chief concern of the old bear now
was to get away with the cub. AS soon
as they reached the ground they looked
up at me, apprehensive like, as though
fancying l might be going to follow
them up. and then struck off through
the timber.
You can bet your sweet life how
ever, I had no notion of following up
that old she bear and her cub ut that
time. After waiting in the tree awhile
to give them plenty of time to clear
out, [ slid down and in about fifteen
minutes struck camp. That was the last
time | ever sauntered over to water the
mules without my Winchester; yes,
and revolver, too, for man is liable
to drop his rifle if he has to Skinny up
a tree on the double quick, in which
case revolver is mighty comforting
thing to have on hand.
This wasn't the only lesson / ever
had that taught me to be wary about
monkeying with cubs. Even after it
was thought the mother had beer killed
our camp was thrown into fine COM
motion one night over a woolly little
cuss about three months old. The pre-
vious day we had been out and Lit up
on pair of cinnamons and this young
cub At our fire one of the big fellows
bit the dust and the other one made
good his escape through the under
brush. The cub stayed with the dead
bear, and seeing that it was squaw,
we naturally concluded that it was it's
mother and that the runaway was its
sire. We carried the cub into camp
and for the night chained him to the
wagon wheel. About midnight we
were awakened by a commotion
outside the tent, and looking out
we saw what we made out in
the darkness to be big emma
mon trying to lug off the cub. AS soon
as she found she was discovered she
became fairly crazed, and started to
run amuck through the camp. She
tore the tent down bout our ears, tore
one side out of the wagon, stampeded
the mules, which we always kept near
by at night, and ended by tearing
the poor cub nearly in two trying to
jerk it loose. Fortunately she didn't
get her paws on any Of us She didn't
seem to have any idea of injuring any
body or any thing particularly, but, as
| say, just ran amuck for general
smash-up. After doing all this dam
age, she got away without carrying an
ounce of lead with her, too. In fact,
there wasn't man in camp that OBJ
tanned more than u confused glimpse
Of her. As Sagebrush remarked after
ward, it might have been old Nick
for all we knew, cutting up
1idos disguised as a bear, and not q
cinnamon at NIL. | reckon. though. it
must have been q hear Hort CatsfeT |