“I ’low I don’t understand that fellow Omar—he don’t sound lucid to me,” he complained. “I don’t know as I relish bein’ called a Bubble, exactly, either.” He settled back more comfortably. “But he was a philosopher, and I’m a philosopher, so I admire him, and I’ll stand by him. All them old chaps was all right ’ceptin’ the lubber that poured treacle on himself to attract the ants—he was sure peculiar! Get away there, you fly! Golly, s-ship-mate, flies is bad enough, but ants!—”
I made quick work of reaching the spring in spite of the dense underbrush that impeded my steps. But once there I became enamored of a reddish-yellow butterfly—Laura, of the genus Argynnis—and I followed it into a hawthorn thicket, through the thicket to a tangle of moss-festooned birches, and eventually lost the specimen in a dense growth of bramble. I went back to the spring, filled my pail and was stooping to drink when I thought I heard a shot. I could not be certain, as the noise of the water running over a rock bed filled my ears. But I had gone only a few yards from the spring and out into a clearing when I heard unmistakably a shot from my thirty-thirty. I dropped the pail and ran.
When I came to the pine grove where I had left Haidee and Wanza and the captain, I saw a strange sight. Wanza, white-faced and apparently unconscious, lay in a huddled heap on the ground, the twenty-two at her side; Haidee bent over her; the captain stood, wild-eyed, holding my thirty-thirty in his hand; and near them a silver-tip lay bleeding from a wound in his heart. Even as I went forward to ascertain that the bear had received his quietus, I spoke to the captain.
“Good work, Captain Grif.”
When I saw that the bear had been dispatched, I ran back to Wanza’s side. The captain had lifted her in his arms, her head was against his breast. The color was coming back to her face.
“Don’t try to shoot a bear again with a twenty-two, Wanza,” I said, as she unclosed her eyes. She looked at me strangely and shuddered. “Some one had to shoot quick, and I had the twenty-two in my hand.” I would have said more, but Joey crept out of the bushes, looked at the bear, then at me, and said:
“Let’s go home, Mr. David.”
When I was preparing Joey for bed that night, he piped out suddenly: “I saw Wanza shoot the bear.”
“Wanza?” I turned on him.
“Yep! Sure. I was in the bushes playing Indian. The bear came out of the huckleberry bushes in the draw, rolling his head awful. Bell Brandon she screamed. Whew, she grabbed Wanza, she did! Captain Grif woke up, and got only on to his knees—he wobbled so!—and then Wanza up with the twenty-two and shot—just like that! And then she grabbed the big gun and shot again. Then her father he took the gun away from her, and Wanza just fell down on the ground. And then you came.”