e on elbows and blinked about. Then we got up, each after his
fashion, except one scamp who resumed snoring.

"Whar's that brekfust you're yellin' about?"

"Hit's for you-uns to help _git_! I knowed I couldn't roust ye no other
way. Here, you, go down to the spring and fetch water. Rustle out, boys;
we've got to git a soon start if you want bear brains an' liver for
supper."

The "soon start" tickled me into good humor.

Our dogs were curled together under the long bunk, having popped indoors
as soon as the way was opened. Somebody trod on Coaly's tail. Coaly
snapped Dred. Instantly there was action between the four. It is
interesting to observe what two or three hundred pounds of dog can do to
a ramshackle berth with a man on top of it. Poles and hay and ragged
quilts flew in every direction. Sleepy Matt went down in the midst of
the melee, swearing valiantly. I went out and hammered ice out of the
wash-basin while Granville and John quelled the riot. Presently our
frying-pans sputtered and the huge coffee-pot began to get up steam.

"Waal, who dreamt him a good dream?"

"I did," affirmed the writer. "I dreamt that I had an old colored woman
by the throat and was choking dollars out of her mouth----"

"Good la!" exclaimed four men in chorus; "you hadn't orter a-told."

"Why? Wasn't that a lovely dream?"

"Hit means a she-bear, shore as a cap-shootin' gun; but you've done
spiled it all by tellin'. Mebbe somebody'll git her to-day, but _you_
won't--your chanct is ruined."

So the reader will understand why, in this veracious narrative, I cannot
relate any heroic exploits of my own in battling with Ursus Major. And
so you, ambitious one, when you go into the Smokies after that long-lost
bear, remember these two cardinal points of the Law:

(1) Dream that you are fighting some poor old colored woman. (That
is easy: the victuals you get will fix up your dream, all right.)
And--

(2) Keep your mouth shut about it.

There was still no sign of rose-color in the eastern sky when we sallied
forth. The ground, to use a mountaineer's expression, was "all spewed up
with frost." Rime crackled underfoot and our mustaches soon stiffened in
the icy wind.

It was settled that Little John Cable and the hunchback Cope should take
the dogs far down into Bone Valley and start the drive, leaving
Granville, "Doc," Matt, and myself to picket the mountain. I was given a
stand about half a mile east of the