“Never eat meat fer breakfast,” he states. “I’ll jist take some mush and bacon. Anyway, there ain’t more’n enough fer our guests.”
“I can go and git some more,” sez th’ happy sawbones. “Greatest sport I ever had. They’re not a bit wild. I’m going to enjoy this meal because it’s the first one I ever furnished in this way.”
It was th’ only one of its kind I ever cooked, that’s uh cinch. They ate ’em, but there was’n’t much joy over that meal. Th’ Doc rastles one of ’em around fer uh while and gits up enough appetite to eat flap-jacks. When he finishes he lights one uh them burn-easy cigarets and opines to me that blue grouse is overrated as uh delicacy. I ain’t got th’ heart to disagree with him, and Magpie jist nods and turns away to light uh cigaret. Moose birds ain’t edzactly what you’d call “sweet and tender.”
“Are yuh ready to go with me?” asks Magpie, when we’re alone ag’in.
“Go where?”
“Down to see Mighty Jones.”
“It ain’t goin’ to take two of us to bring that tame ol’ bear back here, Magpie, and besides I’m goin’ to be uh heap busy tryin’ to locate uh offspring fer it.”
“We ain’t goin’ to bring it back here, Ike. Ain’t yuh got no imagination a-tall? Th’ perfessor orates that he desires uh wild grizzly, and it’s uh cinch he ain’t ignorant enough to accept uh domestic bear. We got to produce this here animile in his native haunts to make th’ play come right.”
All th’ time we’re pilgrimin’ down to Mighty’s wickiup he’s ponderin’ on uh place to stake out that bear.
“Better git th’ cub and it’s mama before yuh rents uh bungaloo fer ’em,” I advises. “I feels that there’s liable to be many uh slip from th’ grizzly to th’ perfessor. I needs that two hundred, Magpie, but when it comes to gittin’ into trouble, Ike Harper is neutral.”