While the two old friends were engaged in their fraternal demonstrations, Harry concluded to slip around and secure his gun. That would be only prudent, while he had great fear that old Robsart would discover his inexcusably defenseless condition.
He saw that strange and unnatural as the animal looked, there was nothing to be feared from it, and he passed within arm’s length of it, into the wood from which it had emerged but a few minutes before, and a few steps brought him to his gun, lying unharmed upon the ground.
Hastily catching this up, he lost no time in rejoining the two friends—human and brute—that were fraternizing upon the deserted camp-ground.
“Where in the name of the Seven Wonders did that creature come from?” he asked, as he saw the old hunter leaning on his rifle contemplating what was evidently a great pet. The face of the trapper was expanded with a fearful grin, while he occasionally shook in a way that showed he was stirred by mirth.
“That ’ere critter is what I call Speckled Beauty! I cotched him five years ago, when he war a little cub. He allers had a good temper, and I fotched him up and made him one of the best-tamed critters I ever saw. Old Griz’ Adams never had a neater critter, and Little Rifle—why she and that b’ar war great cronies, I tell you.”
“But that color!” exclaimed Harry, “surely that is not natural! If it is, he is worth a very fortune to you!”
“No, in course not; hair don’t grow green and blue even on a grizzly bear. I had that critter so well-tamed that he was just like a dog. He used to go off on a hunt for three or four days at a time, but was always sure to come back ag’in. He wa’n’t of much use to me, and so I let him go and come as he chose, and when I hadn’t nothin’ better to do, I used to wrastle and tumble with him and teach him tricks.”
“But, I am anxious to hear how he gained such a coat as that?”
Old Ruff laughed as he replied:
“Last summer I was in at the fort, to take ’em some antelope-meat, that I had promised, when one of these long-nosed, genuine Yankees come in. He was on the look-out for something to make money of, no matter what it was, and when he see’d my b’ar prancing around, he proposed that we should go into partnership, and show him around through the States; but I told him one b’ar wasn’t enough to travel on, and then he said that he’d fix him. He had a lot of dyes and paints with him that he said he had got up on a patent of his own, and was going to sell to the Injins, and he painted up the b’ar in high style. The dye was the genuine stuff, for though the b’ar was as black as jet it took hold, and made him a purtier color than you see him now, ’cause you know he has shed a good deal of his coat sence then.