“Well, sir, that bear stopped, looked at Ari, and then down to the ground, and then he just backed along the limb to the trunk, slid down and lit out for the brush.  Ari swears that the bear understood him.  Bears have a heap of sabe, but I’m inclined to think that it was Ari’s stentorian roar that scared him away.”

“That’s one of Art’s fairy tales,” said Joe.  “Let Ari tell it, and he has had more bear fights and killed more Grizzlies than anybody, but the fact is that his brother-in-law, Jim Freer, did all the killing.  You never heard of Ari going bear hunting without Jim.  When they’d find any bears Ari would go up a tree and Jim would stand his ground and do up the bear.  Jim never gets excited in a scrimmage, and he’s a dead shot.  He’ll stand in his tracks and wait for a bear, and when the brute gets near him he’ll raise his rifle as steadily as though he were at a turkey shoot and put the bullet in the exact spot every time.  If that had been the piebald Grizzly of the Piru that treed Art, he wouldn’t have scared him out of the tree.”

“What’s the piebald Grizzly?” inquired Dad in an incredulous tone.  “I never heard of no such bear as that.”

“Oh, you needn’t think I’m lying.  I wouldn’t lie about bears.”

“How about deer?”

“Well, that’s different.  I never knew a hunter or any chap that likes a gun and a tramp in the mountains who wouldn’t lie about a deer except Jim Bowers.  He doesn’t lie worth a cent.  Why Bowers will go out after venison, come back without a darned thing, and then tell how many deer he shot at and missed.  I’ve known him to miss a sleeping deer at thirty yards and come into camp and tell all about it.  When I do a thing like that I come back and lie about it.  I swear I haven’t seen a deer all day long.”

“If you told the truth,” said Dad, “we’d hear nothing but deer stories—­the missing kind—­all night.”

“That’s all right, but I’m telling about bears now.  This bear I speak of is a big Grizzly that some people call Old Clubfoot.  Jim Freer knows him better than anybody, I reckon.  Jim got caught in a mountain fire over on the Frazier one day, and he had to hunt for water pretty lively.  He found a pool about five yards across down in a gully, and he jumped in there and laid down in the water.  He hadn’t more than got settled when the big piebald bear came tearing along ahead of the fire and plunged into the same pool.  It was no time to be particular about bedfellows, and the bear lay right down alongside of Jim in the water.  They laid there pretty near half an hour as sociable as old maids at a tea party, and neither one offered to touch the other.  The bear kept one eye on Jim and Jim kept both eyes on the bear, and as soon as the fire had passed Jim crawled out and scooted for camp, leaving the Grizzly in soak.”

“Did you ever see that piebald Pinto of the Piru?” inquired Dad.