Note: This edition preserves the light punctuation of the story’s original 1925 appearance in North•West Stories magazine, including its sparing use of commas.
“For two cents, Dave, I’d knock your block off—honest I would!”
“You ain’t man enough, Sam,” returned Dave Sloan with a cheerful grin. “However if you ain’t satisfied in your own mind, here’s two cents.”
Dave handed his partner a nickel.
“And keep the change!” he added, generously.
Sam pocketed the nickel and flushed. This was followed by a period of silence.
“Well,” suggested Dave, “here I am and there’re no fences around you!”
Sam scratched his head doubtfully.
“What’s eating you anyway,” demanded Dave. “I can tell by the gleam in your eye you are half fooling. If I thought you really meant it I’d have popped you one on the jaw five minutes ago. When you see trouble coming, wade in, is my motto. You’re lucky to find yourself altogether, so unbosom yourself.”
“I always did hate women, that is I never liked ’em none, but I’m hanged if I’m going to see a woman deceived and lied to even if my best friend is doing it. Five years we’ve knocked about Alaska together and it’s the first time I ever knew of you lying to anybody.”
Dave flushed, half-advanced.
“If you are meaning that little tourist girl....”
“I’m meaning her. You told her you were the best bear shot in Alaska and that once a man had hired you——”
“Well....”
“Well you never killed a bear in your life, but you told her among a lot of other things that once a girl friend wanted a bear skin the color of her eyes and you went out and got it. That was a lie! Bill Halsey was the one that done that!”
“That was before I fell in love with her,” Dave replied, “then she was only a tourist and when tourists come to Alaska they expect to be lied to. If nobody lies to them they are disappointed with the country and the people and I’m an Alaska booster first last and all time. Later——”
“You fell in love with her and now you’re engaged. Well, I don’t believe in mixing into other people’s affairs, but I don’t aim to have that little girl deceived. She’s told everybody with the light of pride shining in her eyes that you’re the greatest bear hunter in Alaska and nobody has the heart to deceive her. I’m going to tell her you’re the salt of the earth except in the matter of bears—in that respect you’re the biggest liar in Alaska and that’s putting it as strong as it’s possible.”
“Listen, Sam, we’ve never had a word between us nor struck a blow, but if you get me in a mess you’ve got to get me out of it. If you don’t I’ll run you until your ankles melt even if you are running on ice.”
With this half serious threat Dave Sloan departed.
For several moments Sam was thoughtful.
“It ain’t right,” he muttered. “It’s all right to lie if people know you are lying, but Mary Hanna thinks Dave is a god—which he pretty nearly is. Well ... here goes!”
Sam slipped on his parka and snowshoes and broke trail to Mary’s home. Mary had fallen in love with Alaska and one of its sons and was doing very well teaching school despite her youth. She greeted Sam warmly for perhaps she sensed she was robbing him of his partner.
Sam returned the greeting and summoned sufficient courage to look into her eyes. “My gosh!” he muttered, “her eyes are....”
“What is the matter Sam are you ill?”
“No, Mary, just kinda suffered a shock.” Sam was not one to beat about the bush. He plunged. “You know I’m the best friend, that is man-friend, Dave’s got?”
“Yes, Sam!”
“You know I swear by him and I’m for him!”
“Yes, Sam!”
“Then if I tell you he’s a liar you’ll understand I’m not knocking him!”
“Hmmmm! I don’t know about that!”
“Well, Mary, he’s honest except about bears. You might say he’s got a bear complex. The cuss never killed a bear in his life!”
“Oh, Sam!” She was dismayed. “I don’t believe that. In fact I don’t want to believe it. That was one of the first things that made me like Dave. He seemed so brave in the face of wounded bears charging him. Now there are a million things I like about him.”
“Here, too!” Sam felt uncomfortable. “But I figured somebody should tell you.”
“Thanks, Sam, it was very thoughtful of you—but I don’t believe it. You are mistaken!”
“Well I won’t argue the point, but I’ve done my duty. Maybe some day Dave will be the best bear hunter in Alaska, he’s pretty good at everything else.”
“Just a moment Sam before you go. Did you ever kill a bear?”
“I started to once, but he happened to be coming my way and I sort of lost the hankering when I saw how big he was. Well, good bye, and no hard feelings.” Sam sauntered away.
Dave met his partner a hundred yards from Mary’s home.
“Well, Sam I can see by your eye you did your duty. That’s all right but if you’ve gotten me into a mess, I’ll be around!”
Mary Hanna was too clever to put Dave Sloan into a position from which escape was difficult. Instead she was diplomatic. She placed her hands on Dave’s broad shoulders and vamped him. “Dave, you remember the story you told about getting a bear rug to match your little girl friend’s eyes?”
“She wasn’t much of a friend!” replied Dave, hastily.
“Now that we are engaged it will be quite all right for me to ask a favor?”
“Sure,” he replied, “shoot! It’s granted before it is even asked!”
“Thanks, Dave, I knew you would do as much for me! I want a rug the exact shade of my eyes!”
Dave’s heart skipped a beat, then he looked searchingly into the depths of those upturned eyes. No, he simply could not refuse anything she asked, but he was entitled to groan even as Sam had mentally groaned when he had looked into Mary’s eyes. “Sufferin’ malemutes. Your eyes are brown!”
“And her eyes?”
“Were black!”
“What is the difference?”
When a man lies he must stick to it. Dave was game.
“The difference between a brown bear and a black bear!” he answered.
“A bear is a bear!” she suggested.
“Not in this country! A black bear is a friendly sort of a chap, but a brown bear is a rip-snorting, fire-eating mixture of muscle, bone, bad temper and claw!”
“But you’ve killed them many times before and so there is no danger. You know how?”
“Sure,” he answered weakly. “I’ll wait until the skin is prime then I’ll get a rug for you!”
“Sam said the skins are at their best this time of the year!”
“Sam talks too much, but he’s correct. I’ll go out in a day or two. I’ll have to get pretty well organized. I always believe in organization when it comes to brown bear. Let me look into your eyes again. Yep, I won’t forget the color now!” Dave kissed his fiancée and departed. Back in his mind he wondered if it was a farewell kiss. The story he had related many times to tourists came back to him. It was the story that impressed Mary Hanna with his greatness:
“... Well I had emptied my rifle and every shot had gone home, and yet he came on, snarling and biting out chunks of fur. There was nothing left to do but run and I ran for the nearest tree. When you hunt bear you have to take into consideration everything. I saw a pond ahead frozen over and crossed it. As I figured, the bear broke through and while he was getting out I had time to gain a bit. He came on and the nearest tree was a half a mile away. Presently I could feel his hot breath and I knew I had to do something. Queer, but I must have taken him by surprise, for I pulled a stunt I’ve seen the bull fighters in Mexico do. I let him charge, side-stepped and drove my hunting knife into his heart as he passed. That settled him. Finest skin I ever saw. Got it in my cabin now. Mighty close shave, but that was nothing to the time I was unarmed and being followed by a grizzly and threw a skunk at him. That time....”
Dave did not care to think of his famous bear stories, related so many times he was beginning to believe them himself. He followed the trail left by his partner to their cabin. Sam was expecting him and his manner was that of a man expecting physical combat. “We go bear hunting!” announced Sam.
“We?”
“Yes, we!”
“No, you mean you,” answered Sam. “I looked into your girl’s eyes and they’re brown and it takes a large bear, one weighing close to a ton to match that shade of brown.”
“What business you got looking into my girl’s eyes?” growled Dave.
“I wanted to see what sort of a bear you had to hunt. Her eyes might have been blue or green....”
“We take the trail in the morning,” Dave announced, “better oil up your rifle and get some grub ready. The Alaska Road Commission reports bear on Bear Creek which is the first Bear Creek I ever heard of that actually had bear near it. The Commission invites us to use their tents up there. That’ll save us packing our own tents. While you are getting the stuff together I’m going to talk to a couple of trappers and learn how to shoot bear.”
Though reluctant to go, Sam decided all things considered he was getting off easy and agreed with enthusiasm, outwardly. He packed grub for the trail and examined dog sled and harness. It was dark when Dave Sloan returned. His mental state was very bad. He did not know it, but the trappers had lied to him very thoroughly and gotten away with it. Dave gathered from their accounts a hunter had less than a fifty-fifty chance with a bear in the open.
It was late the following day that the pair made camp in one of the Road Commission’s grading camps. They stirred up a batch of sour dough, dried out the tent and made themselves at home. While Dave prepared the evening meal in the cook tent Sam overhauled two bunks in a structure serving in Summer as a bunk house.
They ate the meal in silence and turned in immediately afterwards. The music of the river moving lazily between banks of snow lulled Sam to sleep, but Dave turned over frequently and counted sheep in an effort to slumber. His thoughts turned to bear.
Down in his heart he knew there was more than a gentle request in her mind when Mary Hanna asked for a bear rug the color of her eyes. Perhaps there was even the faintest bit of jealousy, but Dave never thought of that. He knew that it was a plea to justify her faith in his prowess, and it was this desire to make good that was driving him forward mercilessly.
Sam was snoring! At any other time Dave could have slept despite Sam’s snores, but now it was impossible. “Turn over on your side!” he growled, “and cut out that snoring!”
Sam turned sleepily, there was silence, then he flopped back again. The snoring was resumed. Dave looked at his watch. Eleven o’clock. What a night! He was almost asleep after an eternity when Sam put on another record and snored louder than ever. Dave gathered up his blankets and made a bed on the floor of the cook tent. Presently he slept.
It was not quite dawn that a three-year-old brown bear, rather large for his age, a hundred percent baby by conservative judging, emerged from a timbered ridge and made his way toward the river. Frequently he sniffed. Once in his life he had tasted bacon scraps left by a prospector and he had never forgotten either the taste nor the scent. As he came nearer the river the scent became stronger.
He eyed the tents with interest and noted the presence of mankind, but being a brown bear he advanced rather than retreated. His keen nose led him to the cook tent. He entered and the flap fell behind him. His paws knocked over a coffee pot and two kettles in his efforts to reach the slab of bacon swinging just above. The rattle of the pot aroused the sleeper.
“Getting breakfast, Sam? Had a devil of a night, on account of your snoring. Make that coffee strong!”
The reply was a growl of deeper tones than Sam gave even in his grouchy moods. It was a sort of rumble as if the tones were being dragged over a washboard.
Dave leaped from his blankets with a wild light in his eyes.
“SAM!” he bellowed.
Distant peaks echoed the word. The next moment Dave had hurled the table, dishes and all at the intruder. The rattle of tin was deafening. The bear plunged headlong into the tent wall and ropes. The tent collapsed and somewhere beneath the violent bulging a man and bear sought to escape.
Sam leaped from his own tent and stood bare-footed in the snow with rifle in his hand. He did not know what to shoot at for bear and man made similar bulges in the wrecked tent.
“Now’s your chance,” yelled Sam excitedly, “you’ll never have a better one. You always claimed when trouble came your way you waded in. Wade in and use your knife like you did in the story!”
“He ain’t the right color!” screamed the desperate partner who somehow had gotten on the bottom with the table, minus legs on top and the bear on top of the table. Condensed milk trickled down his neck, the pepper box came open and the bear snorted. “Hurry Sam, he’s got me, I feel blood, my own cold blood trickling down my neck.”
Sam leaped for the tent as the canvas was stained a deep red. The next instant he was sent sprawling as the seams parted and the bear emerged. Sam lifted his rifle and aimed. “Pink!” went the hammer as he pulled the trigger.
“Dog gone! Forgot to slip a ca’tridge in after I cleaned it!”
He jerked the lever, aimed and fired. The peaks echoed with the roar of the rifle, the bear dropped at the last shot and Sam stood with pink feet in the snow and empty rifle in his hands.
“Just the color of her eyes, too!” he announced, trying to warm one foot against the calf of the other leg.
The canvas parted and Dave Sloan emerged. In one hand he held the bread knife; his shirt was torn from his shoulders and across his chest were three furrows that only a bear’s claw could make. His back was covered with condensed milk, salt, pepper and butter, garnished with sugar. His brow and face were wet for he had perspired heavily during the brief interval of the bear’s arrival and departure.
“I’m through!” he announced, “I’m through hunting bears and telling bear yarns. I’m going to throw myself on the mercy of the court. Never again do I claim to be the greatest bear hunter in Alaska. There are other honors a fellow can go after. Still, Sam, we may as well dress, go over and skin your bear!”
“I aim to give it to her as a present if it ain’t too badly riddled with bullets!” He looked at his partner. “You sure had a swell chance to get him with that knife while he was clawing you.”
Dave nodded.
“Yep!” he admitted, “but I was trying to cut my way out. I did swing her at him a few times for luck, but mostly I was trying to cut my way out and when I did open a hole, the bear went through it.”
Mary Hanna watched Sam spread a raw skin at her feet. It was a fine pelt, in prime condition.
“Oh, Dave!” she cried, “let’s hear the story!”
“I’m through telling bear yarns and now that I’ve had a real experience some of the lies I used to tell are better. Sam, if you feel like telling her this yarn go to it. I’ll back up anything you say!”
Sam flushed!
“I can’t make myself a hero and I ain’t going to try. Fact is on account of my snores Dave moved into the cook tent and the bear smelling bacon moved in too. Now I can’t tell you exactly what happened, nor can Dave because neither of us seen it.
“Dave couldn’t see because he was too close for a good view and I couldn’t tell much by the bulges. Anyway the tent fell down and Dave and the bear went to it. Dave tackled him with a knife and stabbed him through the heart.”
The girl seemed to freeze.
“Dave and Sam, I am disappointed in you. You are fibbing to me again. The two trappers who told you a number of bear stories followed along to see the fun and they saw it. They tell me Sam emptied his rifle at the bear after he left the tent!”
“Hah!” grunted Sam, “they told the truth; I did empty my rifle, but you see I must have been excited!”
He held up the bear skin.
“Not a hole in it except a single knife thrust over the heart. Shooting is one thing and hitting is something else!”
He held the pelt close and looked deep into the girl’s eyes.
“By heck, the color is the same!” he exclaimed.
