Evening Star Newspaper, September 13, 1931, Page 74

P2 rasor in his vest pocket. He drove the wolves away and cut some of the meat up to eat. His knees and elbows had now becoms bare. With strips of rags that still clung about him with pleces of hide frcm the buffalo calf he now patched a covering for his elbows and knees and feet—and crawled on. He crawled close to 100 miles. It took him “more than 40 days” to cover the dis- tance. At length hc came to a village which the Arikara Indians had deserted. Here he found a few Indian dogs prcwling among the ruins. He spent two days in taming one of these dogs sufficiently to allow him to ap- proach it. Then he killed the dog with his razor and for several days subsisted upon its fiesh. Glass crawled on down the Misscuri River. Some of his wounds were healing, some were not. He was not a walking skeleton; he was ‘a crawling skeleton. Then he was discovered by a small hunting party of Sioux Indians. They gave him food: they applied healing juices from weeds to his wounds. He recov- ered. He wandered on to find the trappers who had betrayed him. After going hundreds of miles, during which he escaped Indians and met a few white traders, he found the camp of Maj. Henry's trappers on the Yellowstone River. One of the first trappers to spy him was Jim Bridger. Whatever the intentions of Hugh Glass toward Bridge rhad been, when he saw him he for- gave him. He was welcomed as one recovered from the dead. T was natural that against such a background of fact highly fanciful yarns with the bear for a hero should grow up. There was “The Big Bear of Arkansas'—"a regular creation bear, and if it had lived in Samson's time and had met him in a fair fight it would have licked him in three shakes of a dead sheep’s tail.” Around the campfire at night hunters weculd exchange talss abcut the perils they had gone through while hunting bear and about the intelligence of the creature. Then some fellow was almost sure to tell about the bear that put him up a tree. “I left my gun on the ground,” he would say, “and when that b'ar saw it he picked it right up, aimed it at me and pulled the trigger. The only reison he didn't kill me was because the thing warn't loaded. Well, sir, that b'ar was so disgusted he threw the gun down and stalked off snorting so loud that the tree I was in trembled. I stayed up there until I heard him breaking down trees about a mile away.” And there is the story still told among thc Mexican vaqueros of the border country. A long time ago a certain bear that had been offended by a vaquero caught him and while chewing on him tasted his blood. It tasted so good to him that he ate the vaquero up. After that he lay in wait for men. Frequently he was shot at, but no bullet ever seemed to barm him. He bore a charmed life. This bear had a white spot on his breast that looked ltke a star, and they called him Star Breast. He haunted a thicket where two roads, or trails, crossed, and where travelers THE SUNDAY STAR, WXSHINGTON, B. & SEPTEMBER 1% 83t sometimes camped, for at this place was the only spring of water in the country and near it was good grass. Finally the place became s0 well known on account of the number of peo- ple whom Star Breast had made away with that it was avoided by all travelers. Now, there was one vaquero in the country who was very brave and very desirous of win- ning fame. His name was Pablo Romero. One day while Pablo Romero and another vaquero were hunting horses on the prairie in the re- gicn of the cross trails, they saw the tracks of Star Breast. Thosz tracks were so enormous that no one could mistake them for the tracks of another bear. “Listen,” said Pablo Romero, “I am going to kill Star Breast. I know that it is useless to try to shoot him and we have no guns any- how. But I shall rope him and choke him to death the way we rope Indians and choke them. I am riding the best roping horse that a reata (rope) was ever thrown from. He has the strength of 10 bulls in him. This rawhide reata is new. It would hold an elephant.” Pablo Romero's companion halted aghast at such a proposal. He pleaded with his fellow not to think of such a foolhardy undertaking. “Why, don't you know,” he said, “that if Star Breast is proof against bullets he will be proof against rawhide? I daresay he is in the thicket now listening to us and preparing to come after us. Instead of riding farther toward him, we must turn and go the other way.” “No,” replied Pablo Romero, “in this country lead is not superior to rawhide. A good roper, a good roping horse and a good rope can con- quer anything that breathes.” ABLO ROMERO would not be turned. His companion all but left him, but finally consented to stay and watch the roping from a distance. They rode on toward the thicket, and, sure enough, as they were approaching it, they saw Star Breast emerge. He stood on his hind legs, waved his great hairy arms, rum- bled a great roar, and then came on. The horses ridden by the vaqueros were beside themselves with fright, but Pablo Romero, by untying his reata from the horn of the saddle and “playing out” a loop, persuaded his horse to keep going. A good roping horse can hard- ly be stopped when he realizes that the rope is being prepared for action. The other vaquero halted to watch. He saw Pablo Romero fasten one end of the reata to his saddle. He saw him with swinging loop dash toward Star Breast, who had halted and was again reared on his hind legs. Then he saw the loop fall over Star Breast's head, while man and rider dashed on. When the end of the rope was reached, the horse was jerked back and the bear was jerked down. The loop had caught him under one arm and around the neck. Instantly almost the horse whirled so that he could get a better pull, and at the same time the bear recovered his up- right position. And now came a desperate maneuver between a gigantic, fierce, powerful and cunning bear at one end of the rope and an expert horse ridden by an expert rider at the other end. Several times the bear was jerked down. Had the loop not been under his arm, the pull about his neck would no doubt have choked him. The bear soon learned that by grasping the rope with his hands he could break the force of the jerks. Once he caught the touch of rawhide in his teeth just at the instant it was tightening. A tooth was jerked out and he howled with rage. He did not catch the reata with his teeth again. He began to go forward up the rope toward the horse. As the length of the rope between the animals grew shorter, the horse had a shorter distance in which to run, and therefore could not jerk so hard. He could not jerk the rope out of the bear's hand. He was panting hard. Pablo Romero was a brave vaquero. He would not quit his horse. He had no gun of any kind to shoot. The rope was knotted so tightly about his saddle horn that he could not loosen it. Apparently he had no knife with which to cut it. Had his companion been very brave, perhaps he might have roped the bear also and have pulled him away from his friend. He was not that brave. Besides, as he said, this roping contest was not his. At last, panting and frothing, Star Breast got up to horse and man. The vaquero who was watching saw a strange thing. He saw Star Breast reach up and drag Pablo Romero from the saddle. He saw him take the rope off his neck, coil it up, and tie it to the saddle horn. Then he saw him mount the horse and, with the limp form of Pablo Romero across the saddle in front of him, ride off into the brush! That was the last ever seen either of Pablo Romero or of Pablo Romero’s horse. A}MLPdounoru.swerelnnumpupm the White Mountains of Arizona. Among the men was an old sergeant who had fought Chief Geronimo's Apaches and then, after they were conquered, had remained in the country as a hunter. Another of our number was old George English, trapper, hunter and guide. He has climbed up gorges and slept in caves that not even the oldest living Apache has knowledge of. Long ago he lost account of the bears and mountain lions he has killed. When acting as guide he likes to entertain his party in camp as well as interest them on the trail “Talking about b'ars” the old sergeant sald, ‘reminds me of a grizzly I met with once, over in the Mcgoliones. I had a good gun and I guess I hit him each time I shot, but after I had fired at him twice at close range he charged me and there wasn't a thing for me to do but run. I threw a fresh shell into the barrel and, looking back, shot the b'ar in the left eye. “He winked hard, but didn't check & step and came on fiercer than ever. Then I slowed up for a second so as to draw & bead and let him have it straight in the right eye. Now he was winking both his eyes, but he put his nose to the ground and kept coming lickety-split right on my trail. Well o But just at this point a fellow from the East set up a Joud laugh. The old sergeant flared up immediately. SSmSmImm oo o eme e “What are you a-braying at?” he said “Do you mean to say I lie?” “Oh,” replied the Easterner, “if vou say it was 50, I suppose it was. You should know best. I wasn't really laughing at you anyhow. 1 was laughing at the bear.” “What do you know sabout b'ars?” the old sergeant shifted. *“Did ycu ever kill one?” “No, I never killed one,” the East<rner had to admit, very humble now. “Well, let them as has do the t:lking then. As I was saying, with a bullet in his left eye and a bullet in his right eye and both eyes a-winking so he couldn't see daylight, the b'ar took after me by scent. It happened there was a dead pole leaning against a tree, so as to make & kind of ladder, and I guess I didn't run up that ladder. For the benefit of some who might not know I'll say that grizzlies never climb trees, thcugh black b'ars do. “I hadn't more than got planted up in the tree when the b'ar was smelling all about the roots, then reaching up and clawing the bark and winking at me. Nearly anybody would have been scared and, to be honest, I was trembling so hard I thought I never would get a bead on the b'ar. But after a while I did and, finally, after I had shot him in the brain two times and in the heart three times he died. He was a monster.” Nobody laughed. George English looked very solemn. 11\/ES, yes,” he finally said, “there’s been some monstrous b'ars in these parts. Eight years ago this coming November I was hunt- ing on Penasco Canyon. Up there I saw the biggest and fattest grizzly I ever laid eyes on. I shot at it and it moved off. I kept shooting at it through the brush and rocks until I had used up all my cartridges. But it got away. “Well, about a week later down on Black River I met one of the Ten o' Diamonds cow- boys, and he tells me how he had just seen a dead b'ar under a juniper tree up the Penasco. He said it was the biggest b'ar a body ever dreamed of. I was satisfied it was the bar I had shot at and killed. So I decided to go and have a closer look at the critter. I followed down the river till I came to the mouth of the Penasco, intending to make my way up it the best I could. “It's a dry canyon, you must understand. and as rough as nature can get it. Well, when I came to the mouth of the canyon, I saw about as queer a sight as a white man ever imagined. You can cut my liver out if there warn't a trickle of grease flowing right into the river, I thought it looked like b'ar grease, but the idea seemed too unreasonable. My curiosity was terribly het up. I trailed right on up the trickle, going afoot, and the farther up the canyon I went, the bigger the trickle got. In some places there were pools of grease. “Well, when I got up about four miles I come to the juniper tree that the Ten o' Diamonds cowboy had sighted me to, and there, shore enough, the b'ar was, dead as Hector's pup, but still leaking oil out of one of the holes I had plugged in him a week before. I'll tell you right now, some of these Rocky Mountain grizzles get right sizable if they ain't killed off too young, and they shore get fat.” Sitting at the Captain’s Table Has Disadvantages By Frank Condon VERY year, three or four hundred thousand Americans rush aboard steamships and put to sea and at least 60 per cent of them would like to sit at the captain’s table and be important. This is an amiable failing peculiar to our republican form of government. We have no dukes, counts, earls, princes or maharajas, but if we had, you would be surprised at the number of honest Americans who would like to sit beside them at dinner. However, we have captains, and a captain in his handsome uni- form is slightly like a duke. I have been knocking around on steamers for many years and always thought I would love to sit with the distinguished group beside the skipper. Usually, the steward shoves me over at a side table, under a ventilator, but I ar- ranged it the last voyage so that I should sit prominently up with the cream of the ship’s company, and now I know that if there is one place on a ship a sane traveling American should avoid it is the captain's table. It will be better to go down into the bowels of the ship and eat your meals on a tin bucket with the stokers, for you will thereby encounter less ief. 8r'I‘here is always something the matter men- tally with people who sit at a captain's table on shipboard and the mere fact that they are there proves it. If they were sound, sensible people, they would be off at one side, sitting by themselves and enjoying the trip. And once you are invited to eat with the com- mander, you are fixed for the voyage and no matter how you suffer thereafter, you cannot move away. You cannot leave the captain, as that would be an insult. A'r the ordinary ship’s table, if you do not fancy your companions, you can either move or ignore the conversation, but once you sit down with the commanding officer your goose is cooked. Dinner is served at 7 on ships and you get there at 7, on the stroke, whether you feel like eating or not. If you come in late, nine people stare at you with disdain and make humorous remarks of an irritating ne- ture and the chief officer gives you a cold, of- ficial look. Furthermore, you come to dinner in your evening clothes, whether you want to or not. And you get into plenty of trouble unless you are a strong character, A friend of mine crossed from Liverpool two years ago and was doing nicely at a emall table under the eaves, when the head steward approached him and said the captain would be pleased to have him sit at his table. Hav- ing no will power at all, the young man con- - “If the ship happens to be rolling in a heavy sea and you would like to stagger down to your cabin and either die of natural causes or shoot yourself, you are not permitted to do so.” sented and the first person he met at the new table was a countess. He sat beside her. Left to his own devices, he never would have met the lady. But meet her he did, and because he was at sea, with a romantic moon off the starboard bow, he fell in love with the countess, proposed and was accepted on the third day. They were married soon after arriving in New York City and the marriage lasted two months. In the divorce proceedings, it was seen that the countess was not actually a countess, but answered to the name of Murray or Schmidt and hailed from the suburbs of Newark. This fact did not interfere with the alimony and my friend has been paying his tablemate $100 a week ever since, all due to a momentary weakness. Of course, sometimes you cannot escape. You are invited by a belligerent steward, who brings you a formal invitation, which you have not the audacity to refuse. So you sit down with a typical captain’s group and listen three time a day to dull, depressing conversation that would have no value in any language. It requires about 45 minutes to consume an ordinary ship's dinner. and. left to your own wishes, you would then depart and lounge in a deck chair, but with the captain at your right you linger for an hour and a half, lis- tening with a polite smile to stories that were no good when first told during the Spanish War. The captain tells of when he was ship- wrecked off the coast of Africa and you wish the rescue had turned out otherwise. You sit there and ‘you suffer, and it serves you right for being a coward. The conversation is supposed to be ygeneral, interesting, informative and humorous, but you take very little part in it after you have told your story and had it die on you. You thereafter think of no quips at all, but you wish the woman on your right would never again refer to her heart, because you know all about her heart after three meals, If the ship happens to be rolling in a heavy sea and you would like to stagger down to vour cabin and either die of natural causes or shoot your= self, you are not permitted to do sc—not while the captain is telling the one about how he saved the three French sallors at Marseille. WELL known New Yorker, accompanied by his wife, boarded a liner at Cherbourg recently and met an acquaintance in the first 10 minutes, and, as the man seemed to be civilized, the New Yorker suggested they have a table together. “Oh, no,” said the other. the captain’s table.” It was the way he said it that annoved the New York traveler, and six hours later, while they happened to be in the lounge. a steward came with a similar invitation for the New Yorker and his wife. “Tell him no,” said the man. “I have met enough captains in my life. Captains make me sick. I wouldn't eat at the captain’s table if I had to cross in the steerage. And. besides, I've already got a table.” Some of the captains I have met were not intellectual giants, but one of them would pass anywhere. One year ago he took a steamer out of San Francisco and found two pretty girls on the passenger list. It was rumored that they had money, or at least one of them had it, and was paying expenses of the other. The captain invited them to his table and sat them down, gne upon his right and one upon his left. In three days of idle conversation he dis- covered which one had the spending money, It was the one on his right. He devoted hime- self to this young lady, married her in Shang« hai, bought himself a chateau in Southern France with part of the two million and now lives in great comfort about 40 miles from Monte Carlo, where he wooes Lady Luck be= times. He is done with the sea and the people who sit at captains’ tables. He was the smartest skipper it has ever been my luck to meet. Some passengers, discovering they are firmly at the head table and finding they cannot es- cape, take refuge in strong drink, which is a pretty fair idea. During our last voyage we had such a man, a Pete Smith, in the Seattle lum- ber trade, and being extremely bored with everybody at the table, he set about blotting the whole scene from his perceptions. After the second meal, he came to dinner unable to talk, hear, see, feel or smell and was never bored again, being safely intrenched behind an alco- holic barrage. True, he knocked soup on ladies and made social errors, but the rest of his trip was painless. (Copyright, 19381, by Prank Condon.) “I am to sit at