“Right after Harvey showed me so plain how little feelin’ he had, I thought I heard a bear growl off in the thicket, an’ I told him to git ready. I said as I had no gun, I’d climb a tree an’ he could shoot if we got a sight o’ the feller. He ast me if a man could shoot a bear from a tree, an’ I told him yes, but it was mighty hard to climb one with a gun in yer hand. He said as I was feelin’ so bad maybe we’d better start down an’ he’d come back next year an’ git his bear. I told him I wasn’t goin’ to spile his trip, an’ I b’lieved I could stick it out if I only had a warm shirt an’ jacket. “About that time I crossed a bear’s trail, shore as you live. I’d seen the swipe a bear makes too often not to know it. Harvey he leaned over an’ whispered: ‘Which way’s he goin’, Sam?’ An’ I showed him how it was goin’ down. ‘It’s below us, Harvey,’ I says, ‘an’ the track ain’t an hour old. The wind ain’t blowed it dry.’ My heart was jumpin’ like it’d break through, an’ I thought to myself, ain’t I the one fool fer bein’ here without a bear-dog an’ with a man ’at kain’t shoot. “Harvey says sudden: ‘How can we git down from here, Sam?’ An’ I told him there was another trail furder round the mountain that ’ud take us down to Siler’s creek. It would mean a sight more walkin’, but I thought I could make it if it wasn’t fer my chill. He says, ‘All right! Strip!’ an’ took off his coat an’ shirt. I give him mine, an’ after that little talk about the pockets, I got inter his clo’s an’ we started. I knew I could find the head o’ Siler’s creek an’ could make it down by keeping in sound o’ the water. Harvey would ’a’ been a lost man if he hadn’t been with a feller that knowed the country like I did. But he never let on that he wuz owin’ me anything. Jed Weaver had told me that old trail had got so thicketty a man would have to tie his eyeballs in if he come down it an’ didn’t lose ’em. An’ that is what it wuz. When we come out at Harney’s Bald, our fingers wuz bleedin’, an’ Harvey said he guessed if that thicket was ’tween us an’ the bear there wasn’t any more danger, an’ he throwed down the gun. I had to carry it from there on, which wasn’t the bargain at all. But I shot three squirrels, an’ Harvey seemed kinder peeved ’stead o’ bein’ glad I had something fer my trouble.