“An’ the bear was not thirty yards behind me.
“I looked at the bear, as I laid there clutchin’ the grass-roots. Then I looked down over the edge. I didn’t feel frightened exactly, so fur; didn’t know enough, maybe, to be frightened of any animal. But jest at this point I was mighty anxious. You’ll believe, then, it was kind o’ good to me to see, right below, maybe twenty foot down, a little pocket of a ledge full o’ grass an’ blossomin’ weeds. There was no time to calculate. I could let myself drop, an’ maybe, if I had luck, I could stop where I fell, in the pocket, instead of bouncin’ out an’ down, to be smashed into flinders. Or, on the other hand, I could stay where I was, an’ be ripped into leetle frayed ravellin’s by the bear; an’ that would be in about three seconds, at the rate he was comin’. Well, I let myself over the edge till I jest hung by the fingers, an’ then dropped, smooth as I could, down the rock face, kind of clutchin’ at every leetle knob as I went to check 278 the fall. I lit true in the pocket, an’ I lit pretty hard, as ye might know, but not hard enough to knock the wits out o’ me, the grass an’ weeds bein’ fairly soft. An’ clawin’ out desperate with both hands, I caught, an’ stayed put. Some dirt an’ stones come down, kind o’ smart, on my head, an’ when they’d stopped I looked up. There was the bear, his big head stuck down, with one ugly paw hangin’ over beside it, starin’ at me. I was so tickled at havin’ fooled him, I didn’t think o’ the hole I was in, but sez to him, saucy as you please, ‘Thou art so near, an’ yet so far.’ At this he give a grunt, which might have meant anything, an’ disappeared.
“‘Ye know enough to know when you’re euchred,’ says I. An’ then I turned to considerin’ the place I was in, an’ how I was to git out of it.
“To git out of it, indeed! The more I considered, the more I wondered how I’d ever managed to stay in it. It wasn’t bigger than three foot by two, or two an’ a half, maybe, in width, out from the cliff-face. On my left, as I sat with my back agin the cliff, a wall o’ rock ran out straight, closin’ off the pocket to that side clean an’ sharp, though with a leetle kind of a roughness, so to speak—nothin’ more than a roughness—which I calculated might do, on 279 a pinch, fer me to hang on to if I wanted to try to climb round to the other side. I didn’t want to jest yet, bein’ still shaky from the drop, which, as things turned out, was just as well for me.
“To my right a bit of a ledge, maybe six or eight inches wide, ran off along the cliff-face for a matter of ten or a dozen feet, then slanted up, an’ widened out agin to another little pocket, or shelf like, of bare rock, about level with the top o’ my head. From this shelf a narrow crack, not more than two or three inches wide, kind o’ zigzagged away till it reached the top o’ the cliff, perhaps forty foot off. It wasn’t much, but it looked like somethin’ I could git a good finger-hold into, if only I could work my way along to that leetle shelf. I was figurin’ hard on this, an’ had about made up my mind to try it, an’ was reachin’ out, in fact, to start, when I stopped sudden.
“A good, healthy-lookin’ rattler, his diamond-pattern back bright in the sun, come out of the crevice an’ stopped on the shelf to take a look at the weather.
“It struck me right off that he was on his way down to this pocket o’ mine, which was maybe his favorite country residence. I didn’t like one bit the idee o’ his comin’ an’ findin’ me there, when I’d never been invited. I felt 280 right bad about it, you bet; and I’d have got away if I could. But not bein’ able to, there was nothin’ fer me to do but try an’ make myself onpleasant. I grabbed up a handful o’ dirt an’ threw it at the rattler. It scattered all ’round him, of course, an’ some of it hit him. Whereupon he coiled himself like a flash, with head an’ tail both lifted, an’ rattled indignantly. There was nothin’ big enough to do him any damage with, an’ I was mighty oneasy lest he might insist on comin’ home to see who his impident caller was. But I kept on flingin’ dirt as long as there was any handy, while he kept on rattlin’, madder an’ madder. Then I stopped, to think what I’d better do next. I was jest startin’ to take off my boot, to hit him with as he come along the narrow ledge, when suddenly he uncoiled an’ slipped back into the crevice.
“Either it was very hot, or I’d been a bit more anxious than I’d realized, for I felt my forehead wet with sweat; I drew my sleeve across it, all the time keeping my eyes glued on the spot where the rattler’d disappeared. Jest then, seemed to me, I felt a breath on the back o’ my neck. A kind o’ cold chill crinkled down my backbone, an’ I turned my face ’round sharp. 281
“Will you believe it, boys? I was nigh jumpin’ straight off that there ledge, right into the landscape an’ eternity! There, starin’ ’round the wall o’ rock, not one inch more than a foot away from mine, was the face o’ the bear.
“Well, I was scared. There’s no gittin’ round that fact. There was something so onnatural about that big, wicked face hangin’ there over that awful height, an’ starin’ so close into mine. I jest naturally scrooged away as fur as I could git, an’ hung on tight to the rock so’s not to go over. An’ then my face wasn’t more’n two feet away, do the best I could; an’ that was the time I found what it felt like to be right down scared. I believe if that face had come much closer, I’d have bit at it, that minute, like a rat in a hole.