“Truth are the truth,” sez I, “if an Injun do speak it, and my sarvis to you for the complement.”
After a wile the old devil’s baby of a bull laid down, for he’d lost a purty smart chance of blood, and what doz one of the b’ys do, but gits a-straddle on his back. The way he riz up warn’t slow, and off he sot as if the prairie were afire behind him. I’ve a notion the b’y never rode so sharp a rail before as that bull’s hump.
The old Injun the b’y belonged to wur as white as a lump of chalk for fear his b’y would be killed, and he bangs away at the bull and hits him in the belly, for he wur afraid of breaking the by’s leg if he squinted at the heart. That maid the cretur as ugly as a copperhead in July, and he takes arter the old hero like a whole team of thunderbolts.
“Run! run, father!” screeches the young varmint to the old one, “or I’ll be down on ye like a falling star,” and I begun to see the old one was in danger pretty considerably much.
So I sung out to the b’y to raze his leg, cause it kivered the critter’s heart, and I wish I may be shot if he didn’t do it as cool as if I held the breech of the rifle at him and not the muzzle, but that’s the nature of an Injun. Bang goes old Kill-devil and down comes old bull-beef; but the b’y couldn’t walk for a week, and he kyind of thort he’d never ride bairbacked on a buffalo agin, without he seed some special ’casion.
XXV.
COLONEL CROCKETT’S ADVENTURE WITH A GRIZZLY BEAR.
You may say what you please, and be hanged to you, Mr. Stranger, about your hannycondy, the great terrificacious sarpint of Seelon, in South Ameriky, and your rale Bengal tiger from Afriky. Both on ’em heated to a white heat, and welded into one, would be no part of a priming to a grizzly bear of the Rocky Mountains. He’d chaw up your roonosseros, and your lion, and your tiger, as small as cut tobacco, for breakfast, and pick his teeth with the bones. The cretur’s rale grit, and don’t mind fire no more than sugar plums, and none of your wild beastesses can say that for themselves. I’ve killed one or two on ’em myself, which ar not a thing many suckers can boast on, tho’ they are pretty good at scalping Injuns. I was delightfully skeered by the fust I ever saw—no, that ar a lie, tho’ I say it myself: Davy Crockett was never skeered by anything but a female woman; but it ar a fact that I war tetotaciously consarned for my life.
You see it war when I war young I went to massacree the buffaloes on the head of Little Great Small Deep Shallow Big Muddy River, with my nigger b’y Doughboy, what I give three hundred dollars for. I’d been all day, till now, vagabondizing about the prairie, without seeing an atom of a buffalo, when I seed one grazing in the rushes, on the edge of a pond, and a crusty old batchelder he was. He war a thousand year old at least, for his hide were all kivered with skars, and he had as much beard as would do all the dandies I’ve seen in Broadway for whiskers and mustashes a hull year. His eyes looked like two holes burnt in a blanket, or two bullets fired into a stump; and I see he was a cross cantankerous feller, what coodent have no cumfort of his life bekays he war too quarrelsome. If there’s ennything Davy Crockett’s remarkable for, it’s for his tender feelings, speshally toward dum creturs; and I thort it would be a marcy to take away his life, seeing it war onny a torment to him, and he hadent no right to live, no how. So I creeps toward him like a garter snake through the grass, tralein Kill-devil arter me. I war a going to tickle him a little about the short ribs, jest to make him feel amiable, when out jumps a great bear, as big as Kongress Hall, out of the rushes, and lights upon the old Jew like a grey-winged plover. He only hit him one blow, but that war a side winder. I wish I may be kicked to death by grasshoppers, if he didn’t tare out five of his ribs, and laid his heart and liver all bare. I kinder sorter pitted the old feller when I see him brought to such an untimely eend, and I didn’t somehow think the bear done the thing that war right, for I always does my own skalping, and no thanks to interlopers. So, sez I:
“I’m a civil man, Mr. Bear, saving your presence, and I won’t come for to go to give you no insolatious language; but I’ll thank you, when we meet again, not to disremember the old saying, but let every man skin his own skunks.”
And with that I insinnivated a ball slap through his hart.