In a few minutes I had got Stumpy's head back into the position
assigned it by Nature, had crowded his eyes in, and was going about
with a reassuring smile, helping the pious upon their feet. Not a word
was spoken; I took the lead, and we strode solemnly to camp, picking
up Lame Dave at the foot of his acclivity, played a little game for
Gus Jamison's horse and "calamities," then mounted our steeds,
departing thence. Three or four days afterward I ventured cautiously
upon a covert allusion to peculiar lakes, but the simultaneous
clicking of ten revolvers convinced me that I need not trouble myself
to pursue the subject.
* * * * *
STRINGING A BEAR.
"I was looking for my horse one morning, up in the San Joaquin
Valley," said old Sandy Fowler, absently stirring the camp fire, "when
I saw a big bull grizzly lying in the sunshine, picking his teeth with
his claws, and smiling, as if he said, 'You need not mind the horse,
old fellow; he's been found.' I at once gave a loud whoop, which I
thought would be heard by the boys in the camp, and prepared to string
the brute."
"Oh, I know how it goes," interrupted Smarty Mellor, as we called him;
"seen it done heaps o' times! Six or eight o' ye rides up to the b'ar,
and s'rounds him, every son-of-a-gun with a _riata_ a mile long, and
worries him till he gits his mad up, and while he's a-chasin' one
feller the others is a-goin' aeter him, and a-floorin' of him by
loopin' his feet as they comes up behind, and when he turns onto them
fellers the other chappy turns onto him, and puts another loop onto
his feet as they comes up behind, and then--"
"I bound my _riata_ tightly about my wrist," resumed old Sandy,
composedly, "so that the beast should not jerk away when I had got
him.
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