some things and I never could stand bears in my bed; they smell worse than Indians.  So I says to that bear, which was looking mighty wishful into my snug quarters, ‘Git along out of this; I was here first,’ and I reached up and fetched him a back-handed slap on the nose.  You’d orter heard him sneeze as he moseyed off.  Last thing I remembered when I turned over and went to sleep was him a sneezing as he wandered around looking for another hole.

“If that had been a she-bear, of course I’d have crawled out and gave her my place like a gentleman.  You never know what a she—­bear, or any other kind of she, is going to do next, and the best way to get along with ’em is to let ’em have their own way and be polite.  I’m always polite to ladies—­or most always any way.  Of course when they get too cantankerous a man has to forget his manners and call ’em down.

“I was impolite to a she-bear once, but she got back at me.  I was over on the far side of Signal Peak hunting gray squirrels with a shot-gun.  I heard a funny sort of squealing a little way off, and set out to find out what was going on in the woods.  Poking quietly through the brush, I came to the top of a ledge that dropped off straight and smooth to a flat covered with bear clover, just an opening in the forest.  A she-bear was busy cracking open sugar pine cones and showing two cubs how to get the nuts out of them.  The little fellows were having a gay old time, wrestling, boxing, stealing nuts from mamma and rolling about in the clover like a couple of kids, and I laid down in some bushes on top of the ledge and watched them.  Sometimes they would grab a cone from the old one or bite her ear, and she would scold them and cuff them until they yelped that they’d be good.  They couldn’t be good half a minute, and they had the old lady’s patience most worn out before I took a hand in the frolic.

“The old bear’s coat was pretty thin and rusty, and she’d been sitting down or coasting down a bear slide so much that all the hair was worn off her hams slick and smooth.  She looked mighty ridiculous when her back was turned, and it came into my fool head that a charge of small shot in the smooth place would be mighty surprising to her and help out the fun a whole lot.  She couldn’t get at me on the ledge, so I was perfectly safe to play jokes on her, and I wanted to see her jump.  So I shoved the gun out through a bush and turned it loose.  She was sixty yards away and the shot stung her good without doing any great harm.

“‘Woof!’ said the old bear as she jumped four feet high, and when she lit she was as mad as a wet hen.  She looked up at the ledge, but couldn’t see me, and she looked all around for somebody or something to blame for her trouble.  Not a thing was in sight to account for it.  She sat down sort of sideways, reached around with one paw to scratch where it hurt and thought the matter over.  I had to stuff grass in my mouth to keep from howling with laughter at the way she cocked her head and seemed to be sizing up the situation while she scratched the stinging place.