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. 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.