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“But the cheekiest thing I ever did with a bear was one night over in Devil’s Gulch. A big storm come up just about dark an’ I found a sort o’ cave to crawl into. A big tree, a Pinus Lamberteeny” (another sly glance at the professor), “had fell alongside o’ some rocks an’ made a fine dry den. A lot of dry leaves was made into a bed, an’ I says to Sunday: ‘Reckon we ‘ll have company before long. Wonder whether it ‘ll be a brown or a grizzly.’ Sunday, he curled up an’ went to sleep, an’ I was settin’ down at the mouth of the den lookin’ out into the dark when up come a big, black thing. I knew ‘t was the bear, an’ it was too dark to see if it was a grizzly. But it just made me mad to think of that bear comin’ to turn me out into the rain, an’ I up with my fist an’ give ‘im a cuff. ‘Git out o’ this, you ole tramp,’ says I. ‘I was here first, an’ there ain’t no room fer you.’ An’ I belted him on the other ear. That bear jest turned tail an’ walked off as meek as Moses, an’ me an’ Sunday had the den to ourselves all night.

“Yes, sir,” and he shook his head and chuckled in delighted remembrance of his waggishness, “that was jest about the cheekiest joke I ever played on a bear!”

Posey’s mirthful spirits make him always a welcome visitor in the cabins that, tucked away among trees and bowlders, shelter the lone mountaineers. But of all those who live within the circuit of his peregrinations his particular chum is Win Davis–“J. Winthrop Davis” is the name painted in big, black letters on a pine board nailed to his cabin door, although nobody ever takes the trouble to call him anything but “Win.” After seeing that doorplate, you will hardly need to hear his nasal intonation to know that he came from the land of the tutelary codfish.

That was nearly half a century ago and ever since he has been the child of the mines, the forests, and the mountains. And Nature, as if in gratitude for his loving allegiance, seems to have taken him under her protection and stayed the progress of years over his head. For, although he has almost reached the allotted three score and ten, his big frame, his ruddy face, his shock of hair, his auburn beard that flows to his waist, his actions, and his apparent feelings do not indicate a day over forty.

When our buckboard stopped at his cabin door he rushed out, shouting hospitable welcome in a tremendous voice. If he ever spoke in anything less than a roar he would make his Herculean body and Jovian head ridiculous. As he never does, he is grand.

Posey was there, and, while Win bustled about in the lean-to kitchen making hot biscuits and coffee, he began to tell us entrancing yarns of the adventures and successes they had enjoyed hunting and trapping together during the previous winter. Apparently neither had felt it any hardship that for months they had been shut off entirely from all companionship with their kind. Nature is good to these lone men of the mountains. She gives them happiness and serenity in her arms, steeps them in lore of all manner of wild things, and makes them simple and honest of heart as a child. But for what she gives she exacts an awful price, for she cuts from their hearts the dearest ties of the race. In all those little cabins scattered along the slopes and through the gorges of the Sierras there is scarcely one in which you will find wife or child, or regret that there is none, or wish that such might yet be.