Page:A La California.djvu/105

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GRIZZLY BEAR PROCESSION.
79

Mr. Toots in sportsmanship and woodcraft, came down here once from San Francisco in pursuit of game, and wandering out into the woods upon this same hill, fell asleep one delicious summer afternoon beneath a shady tree. When he awoke it was almost sunset, and the coolness of evening was coming on. He sat up, looked about aim, rubbed his eyes, wondered like Rip Van Winkle how long he had been lying there, and how long it would take him to walk back, empty-handed as he was, to his hotel. Just then a rustling and cracking noise, from a clump of chaparral about a hundred yards away, attracted his attention. Out walked a grizzly bear, a monarch of his kind, yawned, ran his red tongue lazily over the outside of his jaw, humped his back as if to test the condition and pliability of his vertebrae, then advanced directly toward the tree under which the astonished but hardly delighted San Franciscan sat, evidently without having noticed him and blissfully unconscious of his presence. His grizzly majesty had hardly advanced twenty yards when a female of the same species, and but a little less in size, followed in his wake and went through almost the same calisthenic exercises. The first bear's appearance made the man of "Frisco" gasp for breath, the second sent the blood back to his heart in a torrent, the force of which almost caused that organ to jump out of his breast. It never rains a third bear followed the second, licked his chops, humped his back, gave a half growl, half whine of satisfaction and advanced in the same direction at a slow, shambling pace. Every word he had ever spoken in any