Mr. Appel was using a stick and walking with such difficulty that Mr. Cone hurried forward and asked with real solicitude:
"My dear friend, whatever is the matter? Has your old enemy Rheumatism again got his clutches on you?"
"Rheumatism!" Mr. Appel snorted. "You lie on your back with 2,000 pounds on top of you and see how you like it!"
Mr. Cone was puzzled, and said so.
Mr. Appel explained tersely:
"A bear walked on me—that's all that happened. A silvertip stood on the pit of my stomach and ground his heel into me."
"Tsch! tsch! tsch!" Mr. Cone's eyes were popping.
"If it were not for the fact that I'm quick in the head my wife would be a widow. I was in my sleeping bag and saw the bear coming. I knew what was going to happen, and that I had one chance in a thousand. It flashed through my mind that a horned toad when threatened with danger will inflate itself to such an extent that a wagon may pass over it, leaving the toad uninjured. I drew a deep breath, expanded my diaphragm to its greatest capacity, and lay rigid. It was all that saved me."
Again Mr. Cone's tongue against his teeth clicked his astonishment at this extraordinary experience, and while he congratulated Mr. Appel upon his miraculous escape he noted that he was wearing souvenirs of his trip in the way of an elk-tooth scarf-pin and a hat-band of braided horse hair.
The same train had brought Mrs. J. Harry Stott apparently, for the elevator was barely closed upon the victim of the picturesque accident to which Mr. Cone had just listened, when the office was illumined by her gracious presence.