“Take ’em down to the cities, an’ sells ’em to fight with wild bulls.”
At this answer our travellers stared at the man incredulously.
“You’re strangers here, I see,” he resumed, “else you’d know that we have bull and bear fights. The grizzlies are chained by one leg and the bulls let loose at ’em. The bulls charge like all possessed, but they find it hard to do much damage to Caleb, whose hide is like a double-extra rhinoceros. The grizzlies ginerally git the best of it; an’ if they was let loose, they’d chaw up the bulls in no time, they would. There’s a great demand for ’em jist now, an’ my trade is catchin’ ’em alive here in the mountains.”
The big Yankee stretched out his long limbs and smoked his pipe with the complacent aspect of a man who felt proud of his profession.
“Do you mean that you seven men catch fall-grown grizzly-bears alive and take them down to the settlements?” inquired Ned in amazement.
“Sartinly I do,” replied the bear-catcher; “an’ why not, stranger?”
“Because I should have thought it impossible.”
“Nothin’’s impossible,” replied the man, quietly.
“But how do you manage it?”
Instead of replying, the Yankee inquired if “the strangers” would stay over next forenoon with them.