ooks up with Rocky on our first hunt I
had a mean idea to show 'm a few. I let out the links good an' generous,
'most nigh keepin' up with the dawgs, an' along comes Rocky a-treadin'
on my heels. I knowed he couldn't last that way, and I just laid down
an' did my dangdest. An' there he was, at the end of another hour,
a-treadin' steady an' regular on my heels. I was some huffed. 'Mebbe
you'd like to come to the front an' show me how to travel,' I says.
'Sure,' says he. An' he done it! I stayed with 'm, but let me tell you I
was plumb tuckered by the time the bear tree'd.

"They ain't no stoppin' that man. He ain't afraid of nothin'. Last fall,
before the freeze-up, him an' me was headin' for camp about twilight. I
was clean shot out--ptarmigan--an' he had one cartridge left. An' the
dawgs tree'd a she grizzly. Small one. Only weighed about three hundred,
but you know what grizzlies is. 'Don't do it,' says I, when he ups with
his rifle. 'You only got that one shot, an' it's too dark to see the
sights.'

"'Climb a tree,' says he. I didn't climb no tree, but when that bear
come down a-cussin' among the dawgs, an' only creased, I want to tell
you I was sure hankerin' for a tree. It was some ruction. Then things
come on real bad. The bear slid down a hollow against a big log.
Downside, that log was four feet up an' down. Dawgs couldn't get at bear
that way. Upside was steep gravel, an' the dawgs'd just naturally slide
down into the bear. They was no jumpin' back, an' the bear was
a-manglin' 'em fast as they come. All underbrush, gettin' pretty dark,
no cartridges, nothin'.

"What's Rocky up an' do? He goes downside of log, reaches over with his
knife, an' begins slashin'. But he can only reach bear's rump, an' dawgs
bein' ruined fast, one-two-three time. Rocky gets desperate. He don't
like to lose his dawgs. He jumps on top log, grabs bear by the slack of
the rump, an' heaves over back'ard right over top of that log. Down they
go, kit an' kaboodle, twenty feet, bear, dawgs, an' Rocky, slidin',
cussin', an' scratchin', ker-plump into ten feet of water in the bed of
stream. They all swum out different ways. Nope, he didn't get the bear,
but he saved the dawgs. That's Rocky. They's no stoppin' him when his
mind's set."

It was at the next camp that Linday heard how Rocky had come to be
injured.

"I'd ben up the draw, about a mile from the cabin, lookin' for a piece
of birch likely enough for an axe-handle. Comin' back I h