watched a lick not
far away was kicking me and saying, "Get out of this, you old deer
slayer, you, and get some venison frying for breakfast." We were soon
up for the sun was shining brightly and more than an hour high. Soon
the other watchers came in and reported that not a sound of a deer
had they heard about their licks. Two or three of us (I say "us"
because I was now counted as one of them) went to catch trout for
breakfast, while the others were at work taking care of the venison
and preparing breakfast, boiling coffee, frying venison and trout.
And so the day was spent, sleeping, cocking and eating until it was
again time to go to the licks, as the men wished to get another deer
so as to have plenty of venison to take home with them. When the men
were about ready to start to their watching places, one of them
inquired of me what I would do as there was no further use of
watching the lick where I had killed the deer, as it was blooded from
the deer I had killed.

The man who had watched the lick nearest the camp, and quite an old
man, said that I could watch the lick that he had watched and he
would stay in camp. (The men now acknowledged me as a thoroughbred
hunter, you see.) Well, I was getting there pretty lively, I thought,
when an old hunter would give up his lick to me, when only the
evening before none of the men thought that I was up to watching a
lick at any price.

I was pleased to again have a place to watch. Taking some punk wood
to make a little smoke to keep off the gnats and mosquitoes, I
started for the lick and climbed the Indian ladder to the scaffold,
built in a hemlock tree.

I had barely got fixed in shape to begin to watch when I chanced to
look towards a small ravine that came down from the hill a few yards
to my left and saw what I took to be a black yearling steer. I will
add that the woods in that locality were covered with a rank growth
of nettles, cow cabbage and other wood's feed, and people would drive
their young cattle off into that locality to run during the summer. I
thought I would get down from the scaffold and throw stones at it and
drive it off lest it might come into the lick after dark and I might
take it for a deer and shoot it.

As I started to climb down I again looked in the direction of the
steer, and this time I saw what I thought was the largest bear that
ever traveled the woods. He had left the ravine and was walking with
his head down, going up the hill and pa