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.

By the ghost of the great mammoth of Big Bone Licks, you’d have thort, by the way he nashed his teeth, I’d a spoken sumthing onpleasant to him. His grinders made a noise jest as if all creation war sharpening cross-cut saws by steam-power, and he war down upon me like the whole Missouri on a sand-bar.

There’s no more back out in Davy Crockett than thar ar go-ahead with the Bunker Hill Monument, and so I give him a sogdologer over his coco-nut with the barrel of old Kill-devil that sot him a konsidering, and he thort better on it, and sot off after Doughboy as if the devil had kicked him on eend. It’s true Doughboy slipped a ball into his ampersand jest as I struck him; but that war not what turned him; I grinned him out a countenance, so he thort it war safer to make his breakfast on Doughboy than me, which war a thing oncreditable to his taste, seeing I war a white man and he only a nigger.

Well, I hadn’t time to load my iron before he gathered upon Doughboy like a Virginny blood mear, and the nigger give himself up for a gone sucker, and fainted away. The bear got up to him jest as I war putting down my ball, and I expected to see him swaller the b’y without greasing; but he no sooner smelt of him than he turned up his nose in disgust, as Isaac Hill did when Mr. Upham hosswipt him, and run away howling as if his delicacy was hugaceously shocked.

By this time I felt most inticingly wolfy and savagerous, and I jest giv him a hint that no man could neglect that it war best to turn in his tracks, and I waited for him jest on the edge of Little Great Small Deep Shallow Big Muddy. He pitched inter me like the piston of a steam-injun, and we both rolled into the drink together. Onluckily for him I didn’t lose holt of Kill-devil, and when he raised his head and tried to get over his astonishment, I clapt the barrel right across his neck to shove his visnomy under water. I’ll be shot with a packsaddle without benefit of clargy if the ridiculous fool didn’t help me himself, for he clapped both hands on the eends of the barrel and pulled away as if it war a pleasure to him. I had nuthing to do but hold on to the stock and float alongside of him till he war drowned.

Don’t you come for to say I’m telling the least of a lie, for every fool knows a grizzly bear will live an hour with a ball through his heart, if so be he’s onny mad enuff.