XXVI. COLONEL CROCKETT, THE BEAR AND THE SWALLOWS.

People tell a great many silly stories about swallows. Some say that if you kill one your cows will give bloody milk, and others tell as how they fly away in the fall and come back again in the spring, when the leaves of the white oaks are jest as big as a mowses ear. Agin, thar ar some that tell how they keep Christmas and New Year’s among the little fishes, at the bottom of some pond; but you may tell all them that sez so they are dratted fools, and don’t know nothing about the matter. Swallows sleep all winter in the holler of some old rotten sycamore, and I’ll tell you how I come to find it out.

I war out airly in the spring with my rifle on the banks of the Tennessee, making up my opinion about matters and things in general, when all of a sudden I heard a clap of thunder, and that sot me a thinking. “Now,” sez I, “if I war to go home and tell of that, the boys would think me a liar, if they didn’t dare to call me so; for who ever heard of such a thing as thunder under a clear sky of a bright spring day!” And with that I looked up, and agin I heerd the thunder, but it war not thunder anyhow I could fix it; for a hull swarm of swallors came bodily out of an old hollow sycamore, and it war the noise they made with the flapping of their wings.

Now I thought to myself that them ar little varmints war doing some mischief in the tree, and that it war my duty to see into it; for you see just then I felt hugeously grandiferous; for the nabors had made me a Justus Pease. So I cut down a saplin’ with my knife, and set it agin the tree, and clim’ up like a squirrel; for you know a sycamore has a smooth bark. As I war bending over the edge of the holler to look down, the saplin’ broke under me, and trying to catch at something I lost my balance, and fell down into the tree head-foremust. When I got to the bottom I found myself a little the nastiest critter ever you saw, on account of the swallows’ dung, and how to get out I didn’t know; for the hole war deep, and when I looked up I could see the stars out of the top. Presently I put my hand into something as soft as a feather-bed, and I heerd an awful growling. But it war only an old bar I woke out of his winter nap, and I out butcher to see which war the best man. But the kritter war clean amazed, and seemed to like my room better than my company, and made a bolt to get out of the scrape most cowardly.

“Hollo, stranger!” sez I; “we don’t part company without having a fair shake for a fite;” and so, saving your presence, I clenched hold both his posterities. But finding the hair war like to give way, I got hold of his stump of a tail with my teeth, and then I had him fast enough. But still he kept on clim’ing up the holler, and I begun to sorter like the idee; for you know he couldn’t get up without pulling me up arter him. So when he begun to get tired, I quickened his pace with an awful fundamental poke with my butcher, jest by way of a gentle hint. Before long we got to the top of the tree, and then I got to the ground quicker than he did, seeing he come down tale foremust, I got my shooting iron to be ready for him. But he kinder seemed to got enough of my company, and went off squeeling as if something ailed his hinder parts, which I thought a kind of curious; for I’ve no opinion of a fellow that will take a kick, much less such usage as I give him. However, I let him go, for it would be onmanly to be onthankful for the sarvis he done me, and for all I know he’s alive yet. And it war not the only thing I had to thank him for, I had a touch of the toothache before, and the bite I got at his tale cured me entirely. I’ve never had it since, and I can recommend it to all people that has the toothache to chew two inches of a bear’s tail. It’s a sartin cure. Thar ar a wicked sight of vartue in bear’s grease, as I know by my own experience.