Bear Hunt on the Mongaup River
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     While waiting to get breath, they heard a noise under the rocks, and presently the head of another bear was thrust forth, which speedily met the fate of its companion.  It was now dusk and they were occupied with the question as to how to get the bear home.  The feet of the small bear were tied together and slung across the shoulder of one of the party.  The large bear was suspended from a pole and carried by the other two.  In this way they reached the road, a mile distant, just at dark, where they met a team with an empty sled, on which they were permitted to deposit their game.  On reaching home, tired and hungry as they were, they would not eat until a steak was cut from one of the bears and prepared for their supper.
      Zephaniah and Nathan Drake, also of the town of Forestburgh, once had an adventure with a bear.  They were out hunting and the dogs had driven Bruin up a tree.  The hunters came up and saw the bear seated on a limb thirty feet or more from the ground, calmly eyeing the dogs.  Zephaniah quickly brought his rifle to bear upon the animal, when Nathan meekly advised him to be careful and make a sure shot.  "Why," said Zeph., a little vexed at the suggestion, "I can shoot the critter's eye right out of his head."  The ball, however, missed its mark, but it shattered the upper jaw so that the bear's nose and about half of its upper teeth

 
Zephaniah Drake and the Bear

turned up over its forehead.  The bear fell to the ground, and the dogs fell upon the bear.  The bear caught one of the dogs between his paws and attempted to crush it; when the other dog bit the black brute so viciously, that he dropped the first dog and turned his attention to the other.  Thus the battle went on back and forth, the animals being so mixed up that the brothers dare not shoot, for fear killing their dogs.
     Zephaniah finally sailed  in with his hunting knife, when the bear left the dogs and attacked his human assailant.  The man retreated as the animal advanced upon him.  His heel caught in a laurel bush, down he went upon his back, with the bear on top, and the dogs on top of all.  For a brief period there was a lively tussle among the bushes.  Every actor in that drama was in earnest, as much so as though thousands were witnessing the progress of the fight.  From impulse Zephaniah threw up his hand to keep off his assailant as much as possible, and thrust his finger into Bruin's mouth.  The bear's jaws, torn and mangled, as they were, closed on one of the fingers and crushed it.  Finally, as Zephaniah was about giving up for lost, the bear, by some means not now known, was killed; but the hero of this bear fight ever afterward exhibited a crooked finger.


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
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