“Game comes down to drink thar,” said Shif’less Sol.

“Lie still and let’s see,” said Paul.  The boat was almost hidden in the thick foliage that overhung the river, and nobody on it stirred.  Two deer presently walked gingerly to the water, drank daintily, and then walked as gingerly away.  Soon a black bear followed them and shambled to the water’s edge.  He looked up and down the stream, but he saw nothing and the wind blowing from him toward the boat brought no dread odor to his sensitive nostrils.  He drank, wrinkled his face in a comical manner, scratched himself with his left paw, and then shambled away.  Shif’less Sol laughed.

“I’d hev to be hard pushed afore I shot that feller,” he said.  “Ain’t the black bear a comic chap when he tries to be.  I declare I hev a real feller feelin’ fur him.  I couldn’t ever feel that way toward a panther.  They always look mean an’ they always are mean, but I could hobnob right along with a jolly, fat black bear.”

“Yes,” said Paul, looking dreamily far into the future.  “It’s a pity they have to go.”

“Hev to go, what do you mean, Paul?” interrupted Long Jim Hart, as he cracked a joint or two.

“Why,” replied Paul, “all this country will be settled up some day, and how can bears and panthers and buffaloes roam wild on farms?”

Long Jim looked at him with eyes slowly widening in wonder.

“Paul,” he exclaimed, “you do say the beatinest things sometimes!  Now what do you mean by sayin’ that all this country will be settled up?  Why, thar ain’t enough people in the world fur that, an’ thar won’t never be.”

“Yes there will be, Jim,” said Paul decisively, “although it will not occur in your time.”

“Not if I lived to be a hundred years old, Paul, or mebbe a hundred an’ twenty, ’cause I’m a pow’ful healthy man?”

“No, not if you lived to be a hundred and twenty.”

Long Jim heaved a deep sigh of relief—­he had the true soul of the woodsman.

“That’s mighty relievin’ an’ soothin’,” he said.  “Think uv havin’ to walk every day through cleared ground!  Think uv lookin’ every day fur a bee-yu-ti-ful sky only to see cabin-smoke!  Think uv drawin’ your sights on what you fust take to be a fine buffalo, an’ then find out is only your neighbor’s old cow!  Think uv your goin’ off to a river to trap beaver, an’ findin’ nothin’ thar but a saw-mill!  Think uv your havin’ to meet mornin’ an’ evenin’ all kinds uv people that you don’t care nothin’ about!  Think uv your goin’ out on a great huntin’ expedition only to find all them noble trees cut down a thousan’ miles every way, an’ nothin’ wanderin’ around thar but old lame horses an’ gruntin’ pigs!  I’m plum’ thankful that I’m livin’ at the time I do, when thar’s lots uv countries you don’t know nothin’ about, an’ lots uv fun guessin’ what they are, an’ mostly guessin’ wrong.  An’ I’m glad too that I didn’t live in them old days that Sol tells about, when people had to build walls around theirselves in towns, an’ wuz afraid to go out in the woods an’ hunt bear an’ buffalo like men!”