‘How’s that?’ I asked.

‘Nothin’ safe but the thing he shoots at,’ said he.  ’Terrible bad shot.  Kills a cow every time he goes huntin’.’

Uncle Eb was stirring the fire when we came whispering into camp, and Gerald lay asleep under the blankets.

‘Willie couldn’t hit the broadside of a bam,’ said Tip.  ’He don’t take to it nat’ral.’

‘Killin’ an’ book learnin’ don’t often go together,’ said Uncle Eb.

I turned in by the side of Gerald and Uncle Eb went off with Tip for another trip in the dugout.  The night was chilly but the fire flooded our shanty with its warm glow.  What with the light, and the boughs under us, and the strangeness of the black forest we got little sleep.  I heard the gun roar late in the night, and when I woke again Uncle Eb and Tip Taylor were standing over the fire in the chilly grey of the morning.  A dead deer hung on the limb of a tree near by.  They began dressing it while Gerald and I went to the spring for water, peeled potatoes, and got the pots boiling.  After a hearty breakfast we packed up, and were soon on the road again, reaching Blueberry Lake before noon.  There we hired a boat of the lonely keeper of the reservoir, found an abandoned camp with an excellent bark shanty and made ourselves at home.

That evening in camp was one to be remembered.  An Thomas, the guide who tended the reservoir, came over and sat beside our fire until bedtime.  He had spent years in the wilderness going out for nothing less important than an annual spree at circus time.  He eyed us over, each in turn, as if he thought us all very rare and interesting.

‘Many bears here?’ Uncle Eb enquired.

’More plenty ‘n human bein’s,’ he answered, puffing lazily at his pipe with a dead calm in his voice and manner that I have never seen equalled except in a tropic sea.

’See ’em often?’ I asked.

He emptied his pipe, striking it on his palm until the bowl rang, without answering.  Then he blew into the stem with great violence.

’Three or four ‘n a summer, mebbe,’ he said at length.

‘Ever git sassy?’ Uncle Eb asked.

He whipped a coal out of the ashes then and lifted it in his fingers to the bowl of his pipe.

‘Never real sassy,’ he said between vigourous puffs.  ’One stole a ham off my pyazz las’ summer; Al Fifield brought ’t in fer me one day — smelt good too!  I kep’ savin’ uv it thinkin’ I’d enjoy it all the more when I did hev it.  One day I went off cuttin’ timber an’ stayed ‘til mos’ night.  Comin’ home I got t’ thinkin’ o’ thet ham, an’ made up my mind I’d hev some fer supper.  The more I thought uv it the faster I hurried an’ when I got hum I was hungrier’n I’d been fer a year.  When I see the ol’ bear’s tracks an’ the empty peg where the ham had hung I went t’ work an’ got mad.  Then I started after thet bear.  Tracked ‘im over yender, up Cat Mountin’.’

Here Ab paused.  He had a way of stopping always at the most interesting point to puff at his pipe.  It looked as if he were getting up steam for another sentence and these delays had the effect of ‘continued in our next’.