40 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

Indians say he was first a man and walked
upright with a club on his shoulder, but
sinned and fell. As evidence of this, they
show that he can still stand up and fight
with his fists when hard pressed, but more
of this later on.

This huge brute before me looked almost
white in the tawny twilight as he stumbled
down through the steep tangle of cha-
parral into the opening on the stony bar
of the river.

He had evidently been terribly tangled
up and disgusted while in the bush and
jungle, and now, well out of it, with the
foamy, rumbling, roaring Sacramento
River only a few rods beyond him, into
which he could plunge with his glossy coat,
he seemed to want to turn about and shake
his huge fists at the crescent of fire in the
pine-quills that had driven him down the
mountain. He threw his enormous bulk
back on his haunches and rose up, and
rose up, and rose up! Qh, the majesty of
this king of our continent, as he seemed