“Did I ever see him?  Well, I had the d—–­dest time with him I ever had in my life except the day I was chased by a spotted mountain lion on Pine Mountain.  I was hunting deer over on the Mutaw when I saw Old Clubfoot in the brush and fired at him.  He turned and rushed towards me and I had just time enough to get up a tree.  The tree was a pinon about a foot thick and would have been a safe refuge from any other bear, and I felt all right perched about twenty feet from the ground.  But Old Clubfoot is different from other bears.  He’s a persistent, wicked old cuss, and would just as soon sit down at the foot of a tree and starve a man out as hunt sheep.  He came up to the tree, looked it all over, sized it up, and then stood on his hind legs and took a good hold of the trunk with his arms.  He couldn’t quite reach me, and at first I thought he was going to climb up, which made me laugh, but I didn’t laugh long.  The old bear began to shake that tree until it rocked like a reed in a gale, and I had all I could do to hold on with arms and legs.  It’s a fact that he pretty nearly made me seasick.  He shook the tree for about ten minutes, and when he saw that it was a little too stout and that he couldn’t shake me down, he began tearing the trunk at the base with his teeth and claws.  The way he made the bark and splinters fly was something surprising.  He gnawed about half way through, and there was a wicked glitter in his little green eyes as he stood up to take another grip on the tree.  I saw that he’d shake me down sure that time, and I got ready to take the last desperate chance for life.  Looking around, I noticed a barranca, or gully, twenty feet wide about a hundred yards away, and I determined to make for that.  If I could reach the bank, jump across and get to some heavy timber on the other side, I would be all right.  Twenty feet is a big jump and I knew the bear couldn’t make it.  It was doubtful if I could, but a man will do some astonishing things when he’s at the head of a procession of that sort.  When the Grizzly began to shake, I took a firm hold on the big limb with my hands and swung clear of the trunk.  He made that tree snap like a whip, and as it swayed over toward the barranca I threw my feet out ahead and I let go.  I shot through the air like a stone out of a sling, and struck the ground nearly fifty yards from the tree.  It was that fifty yards that saved me, for by the time I had picked myself up and started on a run the bear was coming hellitywhoop.  I ran like a scared wolf and I think my momentum would have carried me across the barranca if the bank had been firm, but the earth caved under me as I took off for the leap, and down I went into the gully under a mass of loose earth.  I reckon there was about a ton of dirt on top of me, and I was in danger of being smothered under it.  I couldn’t move a limb and I’d have passed in my chips right there and been reckoned among the mysterious disappearances if it hadn’t been for the bear.  The piebald Grizzly of the Piru saved my life.”