Pike dearly loved bears and bear stories.  When there were no tourists about to whom he could tell bear stories, he would go into the woods and have adventures with bears and stock up with stories for the next season.  Pike never had to kill a bear to get a story out of him.  He brought in no bear skins, pointed out no bullet holes, exhibited no scars and told no blood-curdling tales of furious combat and hair-breadth escapes.  Pike and the bears appeared to have an understanding that there was room enough in the woods for both and that his hunting was all in the way of innocent amusement and recreation, to be spiced now and then with a practical joke.

“Black bears and brown bears are peaceable folks,” Pike used to say in his Californianized-Missourian vernacular.  “There’s nothing mean about ’em and they don’t go around with chips on their shoulders.  I generally get along with them slick as grease and they never try to jump me when I haven’t got a gun.  Why, sir, I can just talk a brown bear out of the trail, even when he thinks he owns it.  I did one night in the valley.  I was going from Barnard’s up to the Stoneman when I ran right up against a big brown bear in the dark.  He was coming down the road and was in pretty considerable of a hurry, too—­going down to the butcher’s corral for supper I reckon—­and we stopped about three feet apart.  ‘What you adoin’ of here,’ says I.  ’Seems to me you’re prowling around mighty permiscuous, buntin’ inter people on the State stage road.  You git inter the bresh,’ says I, ’where you belong or I’ll kick a few dents into you.  Now don’t stand here argifying the pint,’ says I, just as important as if I was the Gardeen of the Valley, which I wasn’t.  ’Scoot, skedaddle, vamoos the ranch, git off the earth,’ I says, ‘if you ain’t aimin’ to git your head punched.’

“Well, sir, he stood there a minute with his head cocked sidewise, kinder grunted once as if he was saying ‘good-night,’ and turned off the road into the brush and went about his business, and I poked along up to the Stoneman.  ’Course I can’t swear that he knew just what I said, but he ketched the general drift of the argyment all right, what you might call the prepoort of my remarks, and he knowed he hadn’t no case worth fighting about.

“I remember once when Jim Duncan and me was ketched out in a snowstorm up near the head of Alder Creek, and lost each other in the dark.  I knew Jim would take care of himself and it was no use tramping around, so I hunted a hole to sleep in.  I found a place under a rock just big enough for me, where the snow didn’t blow in, and I curled up on some dry leaves and snoozed off in no time.  By and by something touched my face and I woke up, and there was a bear poking his head in and wondering if there was room for two.  There wasn’t no room and I don’t like to sleep with bears nohow.  Bears are all right in their place and I don’t hold to no prejudices, but I’m notional about