The baby bears were found asleep, and alone. How they came to be there, and, above all, how they came to be left long enough alone by their mother for a feeble boy to rush forward at sight of them, catch them up in his arms and escape with them, will always be a wonder. But this one thing is certain, you had about as well take up two rattlesnakes in your arms as two baby bears, and hope to get off unharmed, if the mother of the young bears is within a mile of you. This boy, however, had not yet learned caution, and he probably was not born with much fear in his make-up. And then he was so lonesome, and this man Reese was so cruel and so cross, with his big nose like a sounding fog-horn, that the boy was glad to get even a bear to love and play with.
They, so far from being frightened or cross, began to root around under his arms and against his breast, like little pigs, for something to eat. Possibly their mother had been killed by hunters, for they were nearly famished. When he got them home, how they did eat! This also made Sil Reese mad. For, although the boy, wounded as he was, managed to shoot down a deer not too far from the house almost every day, and so kept the “hotel” in meat, still it made Reese miserable and envious to see the boy so happy with his sable and woolly little friends. Reese was simply mean!
Before a month the little black boys began to walk erect, carry stick muskets, wear paper caps, and march up and down before the door of the big log “hotel” like soldiers.
But the cutest trick they learned was that of waiting on the table. With little round caps and short white aprons, the little black boys would stand behind the long bench on which the guests sat at the pine board table and pretend to take orders with all the precision and solemnity of Southern negroes.
Of course, it is to be confessed that they often dropped things, especially if the least bit hot; but remember we had only tin plates and tin or iron dishes of all sorts, so that little damage was done if a dish did happen to fall and rattle down on the earthen floor.
Men came from far and near and often lingered all day to see these cunning and intelligent creatures perform.
About this time Mountain Joe fought a duel with another mountaineer down at the trading post, and this duel, a bloodless and foolish affair, was all the talk. Why not have the little black fellows fight a duel also? They were surely civilized enough to fight now!
And so, with a very few days’ training, they fought a duel exactly like the one in which poor, drunken old Mountain Joe was engaged; even to the detail of one of them suddenly dropping his stick gun and running away and falling headlong in a prospect hole.
When Joe came home and saw this duel and saw what a fool he had made of himself, he at first was furiously angry. But it made him sober, and he kept sober for half a year. Meantime Reese was mad as ever, more mad, in fact, than ever before. For he could not endure to see the boy have any friends of any kind. Above all, he did not want Mountain Joe to stay at home or keep sober. He wanted to handle all the money and answer no questions. A drunken man and a boy that he could bully suited him best. Ah, but this man Reese was a mean fellow, as has been said a time or two before.
As winter came on the two blacks were fat as pigs and fully half-grown. Their appetites increased daily, and so did the anger and envy of Mr. Sil Reese.