“I beg your pardon again, but really you are very hard on me. I claim to be a gentleman, and hope I am so. Perhaps that would make me lose your good esteem.”
“Oh no; I’ve knowed lots of gentlemen thet was bully boys, and many’s the high old time I’ve had with ’em, right about hyar. But, they was gentlemen, and I knowed it. Now I don’t know any thing about you.”
“I hope you will know me better sometime,” replied Rafe, in such a peculiar tone that Old Pegs looked up at him quickly, as if to detect the lurking menace in his face. But that face expressed nothing except polite desire to make friends, and the old hunter dropped his eyes again and whistled. A lumbering tread was heard; the pet bear appeared and came rolling up at that peculiar gait so common to his race, and placing his head upon the ground, turned a sort of summerset, erected himself upon his hind feet, and came forward, extending his paw, which Old Pegs shook heartily.
“Glad ter see you, Bruin, my boy,” he said. “Hev ye taken good keer of yer young mistress while I’ve been gone?”
The bear nodded in a singularly grotesque manner, and Rafe could not repress a laugh.
“You have trained that fellow well, old man,” he said. “I suppose he will obey you in any thing now?”
“Ef you was to lay a finger on me and he thought you was in ’arnest, it would take a hull brigade to gether yer fragments from the a’jacent kountry round abowt.”
“I’ll be ‘keerful’ how I handle you then,” said Rafe. “Did I understand you to say that Miss Myrtle is really your daughter?”
“Ain’t no ways anxious ter know, be you, stranger?” said Old Pegs, frowning. “Git up hyur, Bruin—stand on yer he’d!”
The grizzly at once threw his quarters into the air, and in that attitude walked up to his master, and planting his head upon the earth, remained in that position until ordered to come down, which he did at once and rolled himself rapidly over and over until he was quite out sight behind the bushes.