was over my present got up and handed me a gun, and I near fell over.
It was a purty little Winchester, and I don't blame him a whole lot for
being tickled over it, for it shore was a beauty, but it oozed out a ball
about the size of a pea, and the makers would 'a' been some scared if
they had known it was running around loose in a grizzly-bear country.

"'I reckon that'll stop him,' he said, happy-like.

"'Stop what?' I asked him.

"'Why, game--bears, of course,' he said, shocked at my appalling ignorance.

"'Yes,' said I, slow-like, 'I reckon Ephraim may turn around and scratch
hisself, if you hits him.'

"'Why, won't that stop a bear?'

"'Yes, if it's a stuffed bear,' I said.

"'Why, that's a blamed good rifle!'

"'It shore is; it's as fine a gun as I ever laid my eyes on,' I replied,
'for prairie dogs and such.'

"Then I felt plumb sorry for him, he being so ignorant, and so when he
hands me a peach of a shotgun to shoot coyotes with I laid it down and
got my breach-loading Sharps, .50 caliber, which I handed to him.

"'There,' I said, 'that's the only gun in the room what any
self-respecting bear will give a d----n for.'

"He looked at it, felt its heft, sized up the bunghole and then squinted
along the sights.

"'Why, this gun will kick like the very deuce!' he said.

"'Kick!' said I. 'KICK! She'll kick like a army mule if you holds her far
enough from your shoulder. But I'd a whole lot ruther get kicked by a mule
than hugged by a grizzly, and so'll you when you sees him a-heading your
way.'

"'But what'll you use?' says he, 'I don't want to take your gun.'

"Well, when he said that I reckoned that he had some good stuff in him
after all, and somehow I felt better. There he was, away from his mother
and sisters, among a bunch of gamboling cow-punchers, and right in the
middle of a good bear country. I sort of wondered if he was to blame, and
managed to lay all the fault on his city bringing-up.

"'That's all right,' says I, 'I'll take an old muzzle-loading Bridesburg
what's been laying around the house ever since I came here. It heaves
enough lead at one crack to sink a man-of-war, being a .60 caliber.'

"Well, bright and early the next morning we started out for bear, and I
knowed just where to look, too. You see, there was a thicket of berry
bushes about three miles from the ranch house and I had seen plenty of
tracks there, and there was a grizzly among them, too, and as big as a
house, judg