way to get along
with 'em is to let 'em have their own way and be polite. I'm always
polite to ladies--or most always any way. Of course when they get too
cantankerous a man has to forget his manners and call 'em down.

"I was impolite to a she-bear once, but she got back at me. I was over
on the far side of Signal Peak hunting gray squirrels with a shot-gun.
I heard a funny sort of squealing a little way off, and set out to find
out what was going on in the woods. Poking quietly through the brush,
I came to the top of a ledge that dropped off straight and smooth to a
flat covered with bear clover, just an opening in the forest. A
she-bear was busy cracking open sugar pine cones and showing two cubs
how to get the nuts out of them. The little fellows were having a gay
old time, wrestling, boxing, stealing nuts from mamma and rolling about
in the clover like a couple of kids, and I laid down in some bushes on
top of the ledge and watched them. Sometimes they would grab a cone
from the old one or bite her ear, and she would scold them and cuff
them until they yelped that they'd be good. They couldn't be good half
a minute, and they had the old lady's patience most worn out before I
took a hand in the frolic.

"The old bear's coat was pretty thin and rusty, and she'd been sitting
down or coasting down a bear slide so much that all the hair was worn
off her hams slick and smooth. She looked mighty ridiculous when her
back was turned, and it came into my fool head that a charge of small
shot in the smooth place would be mighty surprising to her and help out
the fun a whole lot. She couldn't get at me on the ledge, so I was
perfectly safe to play jokes on her, and I wanted to see her jump. So
I shoved the gun out through a bush and turned it loose. She was sixty
yards away and the shot stung her good without doing any great harm.

"'Woof!' said the old bear as she jumped four feet high, and when she
lit she was as mad as a wet hen. She looked up at the ledge, but
couldn't see me, and she looked all around for somebody or something to
blame for her trouble. Not a thing was in sight to account for it.
She sat down sort of sideways, reached around with one paw to scratch
where it hurt and thought the matter over. I had to stuff grass in my
mouth to keep from howling with laughter at the way she cocked her head
and seemed to be sizing up the situation while she scratched the
stinging place.

"The cubs had stopp