“Good mornin’ to ’ee,” he said, looking down. “You’re there yet, I see.”
He finished the salutation with a loud yawn, and stretched himself so recklessly that he almost fell off the branch into the embrace of his expectant foe. Then he looked round, and, reason having been restored, hit upon a plan of escape which seemed to him hopeful.
We have said that the space he had selected was rather open, but there were scattered over it several large masses of rock, about the size of an ordinary cart, which had fallen from the neighbouring cliffs. Four of these stood in a group at about fifty yards’ distance from his tree.
“Now, old Caleb,” he said, “I’ll go in for it, neck or nothin’. You tasted my toes this mornin’. Would you like to try ’em again?”
He lowered his foot as he spoke, as far down as he could reach. The bear accepted the invitation at once, rose up, protruded his tongue as before, and just managed to touch the toe. Now it is scarcely needful to say that a strong man leading the life of a hunter in the Rocky Mountains is an athlete. Tim thought no more of swinging himself up into a tree by the muscular power of his arms than you would think of stepping over a narrow ditch. When the bear was standing in its most upright attitude, he suddenly swung down, held on to the branch with his hands, and drove both his feet with such force against the bear’s chin that it lost its balance and fell over backwards with an angry growl. At the same moment Tim dropped to the ground, and made for the fallen rocks at a quicker rate than he had ever run before. Bruin scrambled to his feet with amazing agility, looked round, saw the fugitive, and gave chase. Darting past the first rock, it turned, but Little Tim, of course, was not there. He had doubled round the second, and taken refuge behind the third mass of rock.
Waiting a moment till the baffled bear went to look behind another rock, he ran straight back again to his tree, hastily gathered up his ropes, and reascended to his branch, where the bear found him again not many minutes later.
“Ha! HA! you old rascal!” he shouted, as he fastened the end of a rope firmly to the branch, and gathered in the slack so as to have the running noose handy. “I’ve got you now. Come, come along; have another taste of my toe!”
This invitation was given when the bear stood in his former position under the tree and looked up. Once again it accepted the invitation, and rose to the hunter’s toe as a salmon rises to an irresistible fly.
“That’s it! Now, hold on—just one moment. There!”
As Tim finished the sentence, he dropped the noose so deftly over the bear’s head and paws that it went right down to his waist. This was an unlooked-for piece of good fortune. The utmost the hunter had hoped for was to noose the creature round the neck. Moreover, it was done so quickly that the monster did not seem to fully appreciate what had occurred, but continued to strain and reach up at the toe in an imbecile sort of way. Instead, therefore, of drawing the noose tight, Little Tim dropped a second noose round the monster’s neck, and drew that tight. Becoming suddenly alive to its condition, the grizzly made a backward plunge, which drew both ropes tight and nearly strangled it, while the branch on which Tim was perched shook so violently that it was all he could do to hold on.