own through the trigger-hole, and Dad had to go to the
other end of the trap to keep out of reach. Then the bears got the
logs torn so that they could reach in between them in two or three
places, and they kept Dad on the jump inside. Before morning there
was another lion and three more bears at work on the Dad-trap, and
they'd have got him by noon that next day if a party of hunters hadn't
come along and scared them away. These are the facts, but Dad used to
tell it differently.

"Dad said he pulled up one of the floor logs and began to dig with his
knife and hands. He sunk a hole two or three feet deep and then run a
drift under the trap to a big hollow tree that stood just behind it.
While the bears were digging in, Dad was digging out. He struck the
root of the tree with his tunnel and made an upraise to the inside of
the trunk. He climbed up about ten feet and struck into a mass of
honey and comb, and crawled through that to a hole about fifty feet
from the ground, where he could look out. Just about that time the
bears and the lions broke into the trap and began to fight over the
bait. The growling and yelling were fearful, and the air was full of
flying fur, bark and chips. While Dad was watching the fight he heard
a great scratching and scrambling in the tree beneath him, and he knew
that one of the bears had caught the scent of the honey and was
following it through his drift and upraise. Dad crawled out through
the bee hole, slid down the tree and lit out for home. When he came
back with his boys and neighbors he found the trap chock full of dead
bears and lions. He cut down the bee tree, killed the bear that was
inside and got half a ton of fine honey. That's the way Dad tells it."

"I never told no such dogdurned lie as that since I was born," snorted
Dad, "and my boys got me out with a crow-bar."

CHAPTER XVI.

BRAINY BEARS OF THE PECOS.

The people who live on the Pecos, away up in the canyon, almost in the
afternoon shadow of Baldy and just this side of the Truchas Peaks, do
not assert that the bears of that region are wiser than the bears of
any other country on earth, for they are ready to admit that in this
wide world are many things concerning which they know nothing. But
they have never heard of any bears more thoughtful than the bears of
the Pecos, and it is doubtful if anybody else ever has.

No man can associate with bears for any considerable length of time
without hav