One September we went camping out in Wild Basin, Johnny and Jenny racing along as happy as two boys. Sometimes they were ahead of me, sometimes behind; occasionally they stopped to wrestle and box. At night they lay close to me beside the camp-fire. Often I used one of them for a pillow, and more than once I awoke to find that they were using me for one.
JENNY (ON THE LEFT) AND JOHNNY
At the Age of Fourteen
As we were climbing along the top of a moraine, a black bear and her two cubs came within perhaps thirty feet of us. They saw or scented us. The cubs and their mother bristled up and ran off terribly frightened, while Johnny and Jenny only a short distance in front of me, walked on, both ludicrously pretending that they had not seen the black bears. Surely they were touched with aristocracy!
The man in charge of my place neither understood nor sympathized with wide-awake and aggressive young grizzlies, and once, when I was away, he teased Johnny. The inevitable crash came and the man went to the hospital. On another occasion he set a pan of sour milk on the ground before Jenny. Bears learn to like sour milk, but Jenny had not learned and she sourly sniffed at it. The man roared, "Drink it," and kicked her in the ribs. Again we had to send for the ambulance.
At last it appeared best to send Johnny and Jenny to the Denver Zoo. Two years went by before I allowed myself the pleasure of visiting them. A number of other bears were with them in a large pen when I leaped in, calling “Hello, Johnny!” as I did so. Johnny jumped up fully awake, stood erect, extended both arms, and gave a few joyful grunts in the way of greeting. Back among the other bears stood Jenny on tiptoe, eagerly looking on.