"
There was not a branch above me that I could break, but a few feet below
was a slender, dead limb. I slid down and got it, and, holding on with my
left arm and legs, I began to thrash the cub. He growled fiercely. snapped
at the stick, and began to back down.
"He's started!" I cried, in glee. "Go on, Cubby--down with you!"
Clumsy as he was, he made swift time. I was hard put to keep close to him.
I slipped down the trunk--holding on one instant and sliding down the next.
But below the fork it was harder for Cubby and easier for me. The branches
rather hindered his backward progress while they aided mine. Growling and
whining, with long claws ripping the bark, he went down. All of a sudden I
became aware of the old hunter threshing about under the tree.
"Hold on--not so fast!" he yelled.
Still the cub kept going, and stopped with his haunches on the first
branch. There, looking down, he saw an enemy below him, and hesitated. But
he looked up, and, seeing me, began to back down again. Hiram pounded the
tree with a dead branch. Cubby evidently intended to reach the ground, for
the noise did not stop him. Then the hunter ran a little way to a windfall,
and came back with the upper half of a dead sapling. With this he began to
prod the bear. Thereupon, Cubby lost no time in getting up to the first
branch again, where he halted.
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