An' yet that guileless Mexican lays him out with rocks,
and regyards sech feats as trivial. An American, too, by merely
growlin' towards this Mexican, would make him quit out like a jack
rabbit. "As I observes prior, courage is frequent the froots of what
a gent don't know. Take grizzly b'ars. Back fifty years, when them
squirrel rifles is preevalent; when a acorn shell holds a charge of
powder, an' bullets runs as light an' little as sixty-four to the
pound, why son! you-all could shoot up a grizzly till sundown an'
hardly gain his disdain. It's a fluke if you downs one. That sport
who can show a set of grizzly b'ar claws, them times, has fame.
They're as good as a bank account, them claws be, an' entitles said
party to credit in dance hall, bar room an' store, by merely
slammin' 'em on the counter. "At that time the grizzly b'ar has
courage. Whyever does he have it, you asks? Because you couldn't
stop him; he's out of hoomanity's reach--a sort o' Alexander Selkirk
of a b'ar, an' you couldn't win from him. In them epocks, the
grizzly b'ar treats a gent contemptuous. He swats him, or he claws
him, or he hugs him, or he crunches him, or he quits him accordin'
to his moods, or the number of them engagements which is pressin' on
him at the time.
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