He can reel off yards upon yards of narrative about adventures in mountain storms, exciting incidents in hunting, the people he has guided in the Yosemite Valley and upon the mountains, and all the strange things that could not but have happened to a merry earth-spirit, living alternately among the denizens of the wilderness and in the midst of a stream of people from all the four quarters of the globe.  When he tells these tales he generally adopts the crescendo method, being spurred on by the applause of his hearers to larger and larger achievements as story succeeds story.

One autumn afternoon I sat on the veranda at Wawona and listened to the tales of luck and pluck in forest and mountain that Posey, squatted on the steps, poured forth for my entertainment and that of such others as chose to stop and listen.  He talked in quick, jerky sentences, constantly bobbing his head about and making little, angular gestures with his hands and arms.

“Posey,” I said, “did you ever meet a bear, face to face, when you did n’t have a gun?”

“Lots of times!”

“What did you do?”

“Pooh!  I don’t care, if ’t ain’t a grizzly.  If I meet a grizzly on the trail when I hain’t no gun with me I don’t tramp on his toes, you bet.  I jest hide behind a bush and purtend I don’t see him till he gets out the way.  But any other kind of a bear ’s got to give me right o’ way, gun or no gun.  Me get out of the way fer an ornery brown bear!  Huh!  Not much!  All you’ve got to do is jest to stand up and lay down the law to ’em, and they ’ll sneak out and into the bushes and leave you the trail, ’fore you can get furder ’n ‘Be it enacted.’  I ’ll bet I could talk any brown bear in the Sierras out o’ the trail in five minutes.

“Once I was comin’ down Pinoche Mountain, windin’ along a narrow trail through some high bushes, when I seed a bear roundin’ a turn not more ’n ten yards ahead of me.  I did n’t have no gun, and it was n’t much of a trail, but I reckoned it was a heap sight better ‘n scramblin’ through them bushes, and I jest thought I ’d let the bear do the scramblin’.  Sunday, he rushed out between my legs and begun to bow-wow, bold as if he ’d been John Sullivan.  ‘Hist, Sunday!’ says I, ’I’ve got the floor!  Gimme the first chance; and if there ’s any talking to do after that, you can do it.’  So he come and squatted down beside me; and the bear, he stood there lookin’ at us.

“‘Mr. Bear,’ says I, ’I ’d hate to have to spile your hide, but I ’ll do it if you don’t get out o’ this trail.  I ’ve killed eighty bear in these mountains, and I won’t take no sass from you.  The climate in this trail ain’t what you need, an’ I advise you to git out of it.  Off into the bushes with you!  Whoop!  Git!’ An’ off he went, just as if I owned that trail an’ he was trespassin’.

[Illustration:  “I ’d hate to have to spile your hide, but I ’ll do it if you don’t get out o’ this trail.”]