“Since it’s the last dry bed I’ll have fur some time I’m goin’ to sleep,” said Shif’less Sol plaintively. “Everybody pesters a lazy man, an’ I mean to use the little time I hev.”
“You’ve a right to it, Sol,” said Henry, “because you’ve walked long and far, and you’ve brought what we needed most. The sooner you and Tom go to sleep the better. Paul, you join ’em and Jim and I will watch.”
The shiftless one and the silent one turned on their sides, rested their heads on their arms and in a minute or two were off to the land of slumber. Paul was slower, but in a quarter of an hour or so he followed them to the same happy region. Long Jim put out the fire, lest the gleam of the coals through the cleft should betray their presence to a creeping enemy—although neither he nor Henry expected any danger at present—and took his place beside his watchful comrade.
The two did not talk, but in the long hours of rain and darkness they guarded the entrance. Their eyes became so used to the dusk that they could see far, but they saw nothing alive save, late in the night, a lumbering black bear, driven abroad and in the storm by some restless spirit. Long Jim watched the ungainly form, as it shambled out of sight into a thicket.
“A bad conscience, I reckon,” he said. “That b’ar would be layin’ snug in his den ef he didn’t hev somethin’ on his mind. He’s ramblin’ ’roun’ in the rain an’ cold, cause’s he’s done a wrong deed, an’ can’t sleep fur thinkin’ uv it. Stole his pardner’s berries an’ roots, mebbe.”
“Perhaps you’re right, Jim,” Henry said, “and animals may have consciences. We human beings are so conceited that we think we alone feel the difference between right and wrong.”
“I know one thing, Henry, I know that b’ars an’ panthers wouldn’t leave thar own kind an’ fight ag’inst thar own race, as Braxton Wyatt an’ Blackstaffe do. That black b’ar we jest saw may feel sore an’ bad, but he ain’t goin’ to lead no expedition uv strange animals ag’inst the other black b’ars.”
“You’re right, Jim.”
“An’ fur that reason, Henry, I respeck a decent honest black b’ar, even ef he is mad at hisself fur some leetle mistake, an’ even ef he can’t read an’ write an’ don’t know a knife from a fork more than I do a renegade man who’s huntin’ the scalps uv them he ought to help.”
“Well spoken, Jim. Your sense of right and wrong is correct nearly always. Like you, I’ve a lot of respect for the black bear, and also for the deer and the buffalo and the panther and the other people of the woods. Do you think the rain is dying somewhat?”