“Get in a whack at the Greenbackers,” said Col.  Orndorff.

“I surely approves the suggestion,” said Mr. Stewart.  “As a Jacksonian Democrat, I views with alarm the play the Greenbackers make for fusion, which the same is a brace game.”

Mr. Gibson also allowed that fusion should be coppered by Nevada, and Noisy Smith whispered his assent, and the resolutions were adopted unanimously.

The disposition of the jackpot was then considered.  Col.  Orndorff was willing to divide it, but he allowed that if the bear had not butted into the game he would have raked it down to a dead moral certainty.

“I don’t know about that,” said Doughnut Bill.  “The intrusion of our combustible friend was unwarrantable and ungentlemanly, not to say rude, but as the holder of three aces before the draw I claim an interest in the pot.  Of course I can’t show the cards, but that is the fact.  On your honor as the opener of the pot, Colonel, what did you have?”

“Seven full on eights.”

“That’s good,” whispered Noisy Smith.  “I had a four flush.”

Long Brown put his hand into his pocket, drew forth five water-soaked cards, laid them down and said:  “Had ’em in my hand when I dove.”

Col.  Orndorff looked at them and silently shoved the melted jackpot over to Long Brown.  Long Brown’s hand was an eight full on sevens.

* * * * *

So long as Old Brin was under the guardianship of his early friends, it was certain that no serious harm would come to him and that no hunter would be permitted to boast of having conquered him.  But a later breed of journalistic historians, having no reverence for the traditions of the craft and no regard for the truth, sprang up, and the slaughter of the club-footed Grizzly began.  His range was extended “from Siskiyou to San Diego, from the Sierra to the sea,” and he was encountered by mighty hunters in every county in California and killed in most of them.

Old Clubfoot’s first fatal misadventure was in Siskiyou, where he was caught in a trap and shot by two intrepid men, who stuffed his skin and sent it to San Francisco for exhibition at a fair.  He had degenerated to a mangy, yellow beast of about 500 pounds weight, with a coat like a wornout doormat, and but for a card labelling him as “Old Reelfoot,” and exploiting the prowess of his slayers, his old friends never would have known him.

Clubfoot’s first reincarnation took place in Ventura, about 600 miles from the scene of his death.  He appeared in a sheep camp at night, sending the herders up the tallest trees in terror, and scattered the flock all over a wide-spreading mountain.  The herders spent the best part of a week in gathering the lost sheep, but after the most thorough search of which they were capable, some fifty odd were still missing.  When the superintendent came around on his monthly tour of inspection, the herders told him the story of the lost sheep, and he did not know whether to believe it or suspect the herders of illicit traffic in mutton.