and he
stood looking around and waiting for something to happen. While he had
his back turned to the den something did happen, and it happened
dog-gone sudden. That fire was plenty fast enough for the bear, and
the old cuss came out without waiting to be choked. He came out
galleycahoo, and the first thing he saw was Brackett leaning on his gun
and waiting for the show to begin. He just grabbed Brackett by the
back of the neck and slammed him around through the manzanita brush
like a dog shaking a groundhog, Brackett told me that he never felt so
surprised and hurt in his life. He hadn't cal'lated on that bear
coming out for a good two minutes more; but mebbe the bear had stronger
objections to smoking than Brackett knew. If it hadn't been for
Brackett's little cur dog, that he supposed wasn't fit for nothing but
barking at chipmunks, I reckon the bear would have chawed and thumped
the life out of him. The cur seemed to tumble to the situation right
away, and he went for the bear's heels in good shape. It generally
takes time and a few knock-out cuffs from bear's paw to teach a dog
that there's two ends to a bear and only one of them safe to tackle,
but that little ornery kiyi knew it from the start. If there's
anything a bear can't stand, it's a dog nipping his heels, and when the
cur began snapping at his hind legs and yelping, he lost interest in
Brackett and attended to the disturbance in the rear. The little cuss
was cute and spry enough to keep out of his reach, though, and he made
such a nuisance of himself, without doing any serious damage of course,
that the bear got disgusted with the whole performance and hiked out
through the brush. Brackett was hurt too badly to follow him or to
fire a gun, and it was two months before he was able to get around.
But he wouldn't have sold that little scrub cur for all the money he
ever saw."

Budd Watson, who used to hunt and trap on the Pitt River and the
McCloud, had an adventure with a bear that didn't conduct his part of
the hunt according to Hoyle. Budd and Joe Mills tracked a big Cinnamon
to a den in the mountains near the McCloud and built a big smudge to
smoke him out. The wind blew the wrong way to drive the smoke in, and
so Budd took a torch and went after the bear, leaving Mills on guard
outside. Like Morgan Clark, he knew the bear would pass him head down
and make for the open air without delay, and he wasn't afraid. When
the bear got up with a g