"'I hope I don't forget that!' he exclaimed, looking dubious. "'The less you forgets when bear hunting,' said I, 'the longer you'll remember.' "We took up the trail and purty soon we saw the bear, and he was so big he didn't hardly know how to act. He was pawing berries into his mouth for breakfast, and he turned his head and slowly sized us up. He dropped on all fours and then got up again, and Davy Crockett, not listening to me telling him where to shoot, lets drive and busted an ear. Ephraim preferred all fours again and started coming straight at us, and Moses and all his bullrushers couldn't have stopped him. He was due to arrive near Davy Crockett in about four and a half seconds, and that person dropped his gun and hot-footed it for a whopping big tree. I yelled at him and told him to take a little one, but he was too blamed busy hunting bear to listen to a no-account hired man like me, so he kept on a-going for the big tree. "I figured, and figured blamed quick, that the bear would tag him just about the time he tagged the tree, and so, hoping to create a diversion, I whanged away at the bear's tail, him running plumb away from me. I was real successful, for I created it all right. When he felt that carload of lead slide up under his skin he braced hisself, slid and wheeled, looking for the son-of-a-gun what done it, and he saw me pouring powder hell-bent down my gun. He must 'a' knowed that I was the real business end of the partnership, and that he'd have trouble a-plenty if he let me finish my job, for he came at me like a bullet. "'Climb a _little_ tree! Climb a _little_ tree!' yelled Davy Crockett from his perch in his two-foot-through oak. "I wasn't in no joyous frame of mind when a nine-foot grizzly was due in the next mail, but I just had to laugh at his advice when I sized up his layout. As I jumped to one side the bear slid past, trying awful hard to stop, and he was doing real well, too. As he turned I slipped on some of that green grass, and thought as how the Old Man would have to get another puncher. "'I ain't never going to peter out with a tenderfoot looking on if I can help it!' I said to myself, and I jerked loose my six-shooter, shooting offhand and some hasty. It was just a last hope, the kick of a dying man's foot, but it fetched him, blamed if it didn't! He went down in a heap and clawed about for a spell, but I put five more in him, and then sat down. Did you ever notice how long it takes a grizzly to die? I loaded my gun in a hurry, the sweat pouring down my face, for that was one of the times it ain't no disgrace to be some scared, which I was. "'Is he dead?' called Davy Crockett from his tree, hopeful-like and some anxious. "'He is,' I said, 'or, leastawise, he was.'