y company
that one could depend upon. Then she had her two young steers, well
broken to the yoke; the spotted cow, with one horn turned up and the
other down; the grey and yellow cat, with whom she lived on terms of
mutual tolerance; a turkey-cock and two turkey hens, of whom she
expected much; an assortment of fowls, brown, black, white, red, and
speckled; one fat duck, which had so far been nothing but a
disappointment to her; and the white pig, which was her pride. No
wonder she was never lonely, with all these good acquaintances to talk
to. Moreover, the forces of the wild, seeming to recognize that she
was a woman who would have her way, had from the first easily deferred
to her. The capricious and incomprehensible early frosts of the forest
region had spared her precious garden patch; cut-worm and caterpillar
had gone by the other way; the pip had overlooked her early chickens;
and as for the customary onslaughts of wildcat, weasel, fox, and
skunk, she had met them all with such triumphant success that she
began to mistake her mere good luck for the quintessence of woodcraft.
In fact, nothing had happened to challenge her infallibility, nothing
whatever, until she found that the bears were beginning to concern
themselves about her.

To be sure, there was only one bear mixed up in the matter; but he
chanced to be so diligent, interested, and resourceful, that it was no
wonder he had got himself multiplied many times over in Mrs. Gammit's
indignant imagination. When she told Joe Barron "that the bears was
gittin' so sassy there wasn't no livin' with 'em," she had little
notion that what she referred to was just one, solitary, rusty,
somewhat moth-eaten animal, crafty with experience and years. This
bear, as it chanced, had had advantages in the way of education not
often shared by his fellow-roamers of the wilderness. He had passed
several seasons in captivity in one of the settlements far south of
the Quah-Davic Valley. Afterwards, he had served an unpleasant term in
a flea-ridden travelling menagerie, from which a railway smash-up had
given him release at the moderate cost of the loss of one eye. During
his captivity he had acquired a profound respect for men, as creatures
who had a tendency to beat him over the nose and hurt him terribly if
he failed to do as they wished, and who held in eye and voice the
uncomprehended but irresistible authority of fate. For women,
however, he had learned to entertain a casual