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THE BIG BEAR OF ARKANSAS. |
 | THE BIG BEAR OF ARKANSAS. The hive of "The bee-hunter" |  |
THE BIG BEAR OF ARKANSAS.
A steamboat on the Mississippi, frequently, in making
her regular trips, carries between places varying from
one to two thousand miles apart; and, as these boats
advertise to land passengers and freight at “all intermediate
landings,” the heterogeneous character of the
passengers of one of these up-country boats can scarcely
be imagined by one who has never seen it with his own
eyes.
Starting from New Orleans in one of these boats,
you will find yourself associated with men from every
State in the Union, and from every portion of the globe;
and a man of observation need not lack for amusement
or instruction in such a crowd, if he will take the trouble
to read the great book of character so favorably opened
before him.
Here may be seen, jostling together, the wealthy
The Big Bear of Arkansas.
[Description: 468EAF. Image of a giant bear, with teeth bared and growling, being set upon by five dogs. The dogs are biting into the bear's neck and side. In the background, two hunters are arriving from the depths of the forest, with guns raised, to kill the bear.]
England—the Northern merchant and the Southern
jockey—a venerable bishop, and a desperate gambler—
the land speculator, and the honest farmer—professional
men of all creeds and characters—Wolvereens, Suckers,
Hoosiers, Buckeyes, and Corncrackers, beside a “plentiful
sprinkling” of the half-horse and half-alligator
species of men, who are peculiar to “old Mississippi,”
and who appear to gain a livelihood by simply going up
and down the river. In the pursuit of pleasure or business,
I have frequently found myself in such a crowd.
On one occasion, when in New Orleans, I had occasion
to take a trip of a few miles up the Mississippi,
and I hurried on board the well-known “high-pressure-and-beat-every-thing”
steamboat “Invincible,” just as
the last note of the last bell was sounding; and when
the confusion and bustle that is natural to a boat's
getting under way had subsided, I discovered that I
was associated in as heterogeneous a crowd as was ever
got together. As my trip was to be of a few hours'
duration only, I made no endeavors to become acquainted
with my fellow-passengers, most of whom would be together
many days. Instead of this, I took out of my
pocket the “latest paper,” and more critically than
usual examined its contents; my fellow-passengers, at
the same time, disposed of themselves in little groups.
While I was thus busily employed in reading, and
my companions were more busily still employed, in
we were most unexpectedly startled by a loud Indian
whoop, uttered in the “social hall,” that part of the
cabin fitted off for a bar; then was to be heard a loud
crowing, which would not have continued to interest us
—such sounds being quite common in that place of
spirits—had not the hero of these windy accomplishments
stuck his head into the cabin, and hallooed out,
“Hurra for the Big Bear of Arkansaw!”
Then might be heard a confused hum of voices, unintelligible,
save in such broken sentences as “horse,”
“screamer,” “lightning is slow,” &c.
As might have been expected, this continued interruption,
attracted the attention of every one in the cabin;
all conversation ceased, and in the midst of this surprise,
the “Big Bear” walked into the cabin, took a chair, put
his feet on the stove, and looking back over his shoulder,
passed the general and familiar salute—“Strangers,
how are you?”
He then expressed himself as much at home as if he
had been at “the Forks of Cypress,” and “prehaps a
little more so.”
Some of the company at this familiarity looked a
little angry, and some astonished; but in a moment
every face was wreathed in a smile. There was something
about the intruder that won the heart on sight.
He appeared to be a man enjoying perfect health and
contentment; his eyes were as sparkling as diamonds.
in himself was irresistibly droll.
“Prehaps,” said he, “gentlemen,” running on without
a person interrupting, “prehaps you have been to New
Orleans often; I never made the first visit before, and
I don't intend to make another in a crow's life. I am
thrown away in that ar place, and useless, that ar a fact.
Some of the gentlemen thar called me green—well, prehaps
I am, said I, but I arn't so at home; and if I aint
off my trail much, the heads of them perlite chaps themselves
wern't much the hardest; for according to my
notion, they were real know-nothings, green as a pumpkin-vine—couldn't,
in farming, I'll bet, raise a crop of
turnips; and as for shotting, they'd miss a barn if the
door was swinging, and that, too, with the best rifle in
the country. And then they talked to me 'bout hunting,
and laughed at my calling the principal game in
Arkansaw poker, and high-low-jack.
“`Perhaps,' said I, `you prefer checkers and roulette;'
at this they laughed harder than ever, and asked me if
I lived in the woods, and didn't know what game was?
“At this, I rather think I laughed.
“`Yes,' I roared, and says, I, `Strangers, if you'd
asked me how we got our meat in Arkansaw, I'd a told
you at once, and given you a list of varmints that would
make a caravan, beginning with the bar, and ending off
with the cat; that's meat though, not game.
“Game, indeed,—that's what city folks call it; and
be such trash live in my diggins, but I arn't noticed
them yet: a bird anyway is too trifling. I never did
shoot at but one, and I'd never forgiven myself for that,
had it weighed less than forty pounds. I wouldn't
draw a rifle on any thing less heavy than that; and
when I meet with another wild turkey of the same size,
I will drap him.”
“A wild turkey weighing forty pounds!” exclaimed
twenty voices in the cabin at once.
“Yes, strangers, and wasn't it a whopper? You
see, the thing was so fat that it couldn't fly far; and
when he fell out of the tree, after I shot him, on striking
the ground he bust open behind, and the way the pound
gobs of tallow rolled out of the opening was perfectly
beautiful.”
“Where did all that happen?” asked a cynical-looking
Hoosier.
“Happen! happened in Arkansaw: where else
could it have happened, but in the creation State, the
finishing-up country—a State where the sile runs down
to the centre of the 'arth, and government gives you a
title to every inch of it? Then its airs—just breathe
them, and they will make you snort like a horse. It's
a State without a fault, it is.”
“Excepting mosquitoes,” cried the Hoosier.
“Well, stranger, except them; for it ar a fact that
they are rather enormous, and do push themselves in
twice in the same place; and give them a fair chance
for a few months, and you will get as much above noticing
them as an alligator. They can't hurt my feelings,
for they lay under the skin; and I never knew but
one case of injury resulting from them, and that was to
a Yankee: and they take worse to foreigners, any how,
than they do to natives. But the way they used that
fellow up! first they punched him until he swelled up
and busted; then he sup-per-a-ted, as the doctor called
it, until he was as raw as beef; then, owing to the
warm weather, he tuck the ager, and finally he tuck a
steamboat and left the country. He was the only man
that ever tuck mosquitoes at heart that I knowd of.
“But mosquitoes is natur, and I never find fault
with her. If they ar large, Arkansaw is large, her varmints
ar large, her trees ar large, her rivers ar large,
and a small mosquito would be of no more use in Arkansaw
than preaching in a cane-brake.”
This knock-down argument in favor of big mosquitoes
used the Hoosier up, and the logician started
on a new track, to explain how numerous bear were in
his “diggins,” where he represented them to be “about
as plenty as blackberries, and a little plentifuller.”
Upon the utterance of this assertion, a timid little
man near me inquired, if the bear in Arkansaw ever
attacked the settlers in numbers?
“No,” said our hero, warming with the subject, “no,
droves; but the way they squander about in pairs and
single ones is edifying.
“And then the way I hunt them—the old black rascals
know the crack of my gun as well as they know a
pig's squealing. They grow thin in our parts, it frightens
them so, and they do take the noise dreadfully, poor
things. That gun of mine is a perfect epidemic among
bear: if not watched closely, it will go off as quick on a
warm scent as my dog Bowieknife will: and then that
dog—whew! why the fellow thinks that the world is
full of bear, he finds them so easy. It's lucky he don't
talk as well as think; for with his natural modesty, if
he should suddenly learn how much he is acknowledged
to be ahead of all other dogs in the universe, he would
be astonished to death in two minutes.
“Strangers, that dog knows a bear's way as well as
a horse-jockey knows a woman's: he always barks at the
right time, bites at the exact place, and whips without
getting a scratch.
“I never could tell whether he was made expressly
to hunt bear, or whether bear was made expressly for
him to hunt; any way, I believe they were ordained to
go together as naturally as Squire Jones says a man and
woman is, when he moralizes in marrying a couple. In
fact, Jones once said, said he, `Marriage according to
law is a civil contract of divine origin; it's common to
all countries as well as Arkansaw, and people take to it
bear.”'
“What season of the year do your hunts take
place?” inquired a gentlemanly foreigner, who, from
some peculiarities of his baggage, I suspected to be an
Englishman, on some hunting expedition, probably at
the foot of the Rocky Mountains.
“The season for bear hunting, stranger,” said the
man of Arkansaw, “is generally all the year round, and
the hunts take place about as regular. I read in history
that varmints have their fat season, and their lean
season. That is not the case in Arkansaw, feeding as
they do upon the spontenacious productions of the sile,
they have one continued fat season the year round;
though in winter things in this way is rather more
greasy than in summer, I must admit. For that reason
bear with us run in warm weather, but in winter they
only waddle.
“Fat, fat! its an enemy to speed; it tames every
thing that has plenty of it. I have seen wild turkeys,
from its influence, as gentle as chickens. Run a bear in
this fat condition, and the way it improves the critter for
eating is amazing; it sort of mixes the ile up with the
meat, until you can't tell t'other from which. I've done
this often.
“I recollect one perty morning in particular, of
putting an old he fellow on the stretch, and considering
the weight he carried, be run well. But the dogs soon
he in a beautiful sweat—I might say fever; and then to
see his tongue sticking out of his mouth a feet, and his
sides sinking and opening like a bellows, and his cheeks
so fat that he couldn't look cross. In this fix I blazed
at him, and pitch me naked into a briar patch, if the
steam didn't come out of the bullet-hole ten foot in a
straight line. The fellow, I reckon, was made on the
high-pressure system, and the lead sort of bust his
biler.”
“That column of steam was rather curious, or else
the bear must have been very warm,” observed the foreigner,
with a laugh.
“Stranger, as you observe, that bear was WARM, and
the blowing off the steam show'd it, and also how hard
the varmint had been run. I have no doubt if he had
kept on two miles farther his insides would have been
stewed; and I expect to meet with a varmint yet of extra
bottom, that will run himself into a skinfull of bear's
grease: it is possible; much onlikelier things have
happened.”
“Whereabouts are these bears so abundant?” inquired
the foreigner, with increasing interest.
“Why, stranger, they inhabit the neighborhood of
my settlement, one of the prettiest places on old Mississipp—a
perfect location, and no mistake; a place
that had some defects until the river made the `cut-off'
at `Shirt-tail bend,' and that remedied the evil, as it
in wet weather, I assure you, as you can now
roll a barrel of whiskey into my yard in high water from
a boat, as easy as falling off a log. It's a great improvement,
as toting it by land in a jug, as I used to do, evaporated
it too fast, and it became expensive.
“Just stop with me, stranger, a month or two, or a
year, if you like, and you will appreciate my place. I
can give you plenty to eat; for beside hog and hominy,
you can have bear-ham, and bear-sausages, and a mattrass
of bear-skins to sleep on, and a wildcat-skin, pulled off
hull, stuffed with corn-shucks, for a pillow. That bed
would put you to sleep if you had the rheumatics in
every joint in your body. I call that ar bed, a quietus.
“Then look at my `pre-emption'—the government
aint got another like it to dispose of. Such timber, and
such bottom land,—why you can't preserve any thing
natural you plant in it unless you pick it young, things
thar will grow out of shape so quick.
I once planted in those diggins a few potatoes and
beets; they took a fine start, and after that, an ox team
couldn't have kept them from growing. About that time
I went off to old Kaintuck on business, and did not hear
from them things in three months, when I accidentally
stumbled on a fellow who had drapped in at my place,
with an idea of buying me out.
“`How did you like things?' said I.
“`Pretty well,' said he; `the cabin is convenient,
worth the first red cent.”'
“`Why?' said I.
“`'Cause,' said he.
“`'Cause what?' said I.
“`'Cause it's full of cedar stumps and Indian
mounds, and can't be cleared.'
“`Lord,' said I, `them ar “cedar stumps” is
beets, and them ar “Indian mounds” tater hills.'
“As I had expected, the crop was overgrown and useless:
the sile is too rich, and planting in Arkansaw is
dangerous.
“I had a good-sized sow killed in that same bottomland.
The old thief stole an ear of corn, and took it
down to eat where she slept at night. Well, she left a
grain or two on the ground, and lay down on them: before
morning the corn shot up, and the percussion killed
her dead. I don't plant any more: natur intended
Arkansaw for a hunting ground, and I go according to
natur.”
The questioner, who had thus elicited the description
of our hero's settlement, seemed to be perfectly satisfied,
and said no more; but the “Big Bear of Arkansaw”
rambled on from one thing to another with a volubility
perfectly astonishing, occasionally disputing with those
around him, particularly with a “live Sucker” from
Illinois, who had the daring to say that our Arkansaw
friend's stories “smelt rather tall.”
The evening was nearly spent by the incidents we
have detailed; and conscious that my own association
with so singular a personage would probably end before
morning, I asked him if he would not give me a description
of some particular bear hunt; adding, that I took
great interest in such things, though I was no sportsman.
The desire seemed to please him, and he squared
himself round towards me, saying, that he could give me
an idea of a bear hunt that was never beat in this world,
or in any other. His manner was so singular, that half
of his story consisted in his excellent way of telling it,
the great peculiarity of which was, the happy manner he
had of emphasizing the prominent parts of his conversation.
As near as I can recollect, I have italicized the
words, and given the story in his own way.
“Stranger,” said he, “in bear hunts I am numerous,
and which particular one, as you say, I shall tell, puzzles
me.
“There was the old she devil I shot at the Hurricane
last fall—then there was the old hog thief I popped
over at the Bloody Crossing, and then—Yes, I have
it! I will give you an idea of a hunt, in which the
greatest bear was killed that ever lived, none excepted;
about an old fellow that I hunted, more or less, for two
or three years; and if that aint a particular bear hunt,
I ain't got one to tell.
“But in the first place, stranger, let me say, I am
pleased with you, because you aint ashamed to gain information
say to Countess's pups every day when I'm home; and
I have got great hopes of them ar pups, because they are
continually nosing about; and though they stick it
sometimes in the wrong place, they gain experience any
how, and may learn something useful to boot.
“Well, as I was saying about this big bear, you see
when I and some more first settled in our region, we
were drivin to hunting naturally; we soon liked it, and
after that we found it an easy matter to make the thing
our business. One old chap who had pioneered 'afore
us, gave us to understand that we had settled in the
right place. He dwelt upon its merits until it was affecting,
and showed us, to prove his assertions, more
scratches on the bark of the sassafras trees, than I ever
saw chalk marks on a tavern door 'lection time.
“`Who keeps that ar reckoning?' said I.
“`The bear,' said he.
“`What for?' said I.
“`Can't tell,' said he; `but so it is: the bear bite
the bark and wood too, at the highest point from the
ground they can reach, and you can tell, by the marks,'
said he, `the length of the bear to an inch.'
“`Enough,' said I; `I've learned something here
a'ready, and I'll put it in practice.'
“Well, stranger, just one month from that time I
killed a bar, and told its exact length before I measured
up considerably—I've been a prouder man ever since.
“So I went on, larning something every day, until I
was reckoned a buster, and allowed to be decidedly the
best bear hunter in my district; and that is a reputation
as much harder to earn than to be reckoned first man in
Congress, as an iron ramrod is harder than a toadstool.
“Do the varmints grow over-cunning by being fooled
with by greenhorn hunters, and by this means get
troublesome, they send for me, as a matter of course;
and thus I do my own hunting, and most of my neighbors'.
I walk into the varmints though, and it has become
about as much the same to me as drinking. It is
told in two sentences—
“A bear is started, and he is killed.
“The thing is somewhat monotonous now—I know
just how much they will run, where they will tire, how
much they will growl, and what a thundering time I will
have in getting their meat home. I could give you the
history of the chase with all the particulars at the commencement,
I know the signs so well—Stranger, I'm
certain. Once I met with a match, though, and I will
tell you about it; for a common hunt would not be worth
relating.
“On a fine fall day, long time ago, I was trailing
about for bear, and what should I see but fresh marks on
the sassafras trees, about eight inches above any in the
forests that I knew of. Says I, `Them marks is a hoax,
fact, stranger, I couldn't believe it was real, and I went
on. Again I saw the same marks, at the same height,
and I knew the thing lived. That conviction came
home to my soul like an earthquake.
“Says I, `Here is something a-purpose for me: that
bear is mine, or I give up the hunting business.' The
very next morning, what should I see but a number of
buzzards hovering over my corn-field. `The rascal has
been there,' said I, `for that sign is certain:' and, sure
enough, on examining, I found the bones of what had
been as beautiful a hog the day before, as was ever
raised by a Buckeye. Then I tracked the critter out
of the field to the woods, and all the marks he left behind,
showed me that he was the bear.
“Well, stranger, the first fair chase I ever had with
that big critter, I saw him no less than three distinct
times at a distance: the dogs run him over eighteen
miles and broke down, my horse gave out, and I was as
nearly used up as a man can be, made on my principle,
which is patent.
“Before this adventure, such things were unknown
to me as possible; but, strange as it was, that bear
got me used to it before I was done with him; for he
got so at last, that he would leave me on a long chase
quite easy. How he did it, I never could understand.
“That a bear runs at all, is puzzling; but how this
one could tire down and bust up a pack of hounds
they started after in no time, was past my understanding.
Well, stranger, that bear finally got so sassy,
that he used to help himself to a hog off my premises
whenever he wanted one; the buzzards followed after
what he left, and so, between bear and buzzard, I rather
think I got out of pork.
“Well, missing that bear so often took hold of my
vitals, and I wasted away. The thing had been carried
too far, and it reduced me in flesh faster than an ager.
I would see that bear in every thing I did: he hunted
me, and that, too, like a devil, which I began to think
he was.
“While in this shaky fix, I made preparations to give
him a last brush, and be done with it. Having completed
every thing to my satisfaction, I started at sunrise,
and to my great joy, I discovered from the way the
dogs run, that they were near him. Finding his trail
was nothing, for that had become as plain to the pack
as a turnpike road.
“On we went, and coming to an open country, what
should I see but the bear very leisurely ascending a
hill, and the dogs close at his heels, either a match for
him this time in speed, or else he did not care to get
out of their way—I don't know which. But wasn't he
a beauty, though! I loved him like a brother.
“On he went, until he came to a tree, the limbs of
which formed a crotch about six feet from the ground.
yelling all around it; and there he sat eyeing them as
quiet as a pond in low water.
“A greenhorn friend of mine, in company, reached
shooting distance before me, and blazed away, hitting
the critter in the centre of his forehead. The bear
shook his head as the ball struck it, and then walked
down from that tree, as gently as a lady would from a
carriage.
“'Twas a beautiful sight to see him do that—he was
in such a rage, that he seemed to be as little afraid of
the dogs as if they had been sucking pigs; and the dogs
warn't slow in making a ring around him at a respectful
distance, I tell you; even Bowieknife himself, stood
off. Then the way his eyes flashed!—why the fire of
them would have singed a cat's hair; in fact, that bear
was in a wrath all over. Only one pup came near him,
and he was brushed out so totally with the bear's left
paw, that he entirely disappeared; and that made the
old dogs more cautious still. In the mean time, I came
up, and taking deliberate aim, as a man should do, at his
side, just back of his foreleg, if my gun did not snap,
call me a coward, and I won't take it personal.
“Yes, stranger, it snapped, and I could not find a
cap about my person. While in this predicament, I
turned round to my fool friend—`Bill,' says I, `you're
an ass—you're a fool—you might as well have tried to
kill that bear by barking the tree under his belly, as to
has made a tiger of him; and blast me, if a dog gets
killed or wounded when they come to blows, I will stick
my knife into your liver, I will —.' My wrath was up.
I had lost my caps, my gun had snapped, the fellow
with me had fired at the bear's head, and I expected
every moment to see him close in with the dogs and
kill a dozen of them at least. In this thing I was mistaken;
for the bear leaped over the ring formed by the
dogs, and giving a fierce growl, was off—the pack, of
course, in full cry after him. The run this time was
short, for coming to the edge of a lake, the varmint
jumped in, and swam to a little island in the lake, which
it reached, just a moment before the dogs.
“`I'll have him now,' said I, for I had found my
caps in the lining of my coat—so, rolling a log into the
lake, I paddled myself across to the island, just as the
dogs had cornered the bear in a thicket. I rushed up
and fired—at the same time the critter leaped over the
dogs and came within three feet of me, running like
mad; he jumped into the lake, and tried to mount the
log I had just deserted, but every time he got half his
body on it, it would roll over and send him under; the
dogs, too, got around him, and pulled him about, and
finally Bowieknife clenched with him, and they sunk
into the lake together.
“Stranger, about this time I was excited, and I
stripped off my coat, drew my knife, and intended to
rose to the surface. But the varmint staid under—
Bowieknife came up alone, more dead than alive, and
with the pack came ashore.
“`Thank God!' said I, `the old villain has got his
deserts at last.'
“Determined to have the body, I cut a grape-vine
for a rope, and dove down where I could see the bear
in the water, fastened my rope to his leg, and fished him,
with great difficulty, ashore. Stranger, may I be
chawed to death by young alligators, if the thing I
looked at wasn't a she bear, and not the old critter
after all.
“The way matters got mixed on that island was onaccountably
curious, and thinking of it made me more
than ever convinced that I was hunting the devil himself.
I went home that night and took to my bed—
the thing was killing me. The entire team of Arkansaw
in bear-hunting acknowledged himself used up, and
the fact sunk into my feelings as a snagged boat will in
the Mississippi. I grew as cross as a bear with two cubs
and a sore tail. The thing got out 'mong my neighbors,
and I was asked how come on that individ-u-al
that never lost a bear when once started? and if that
same individ-u-al didn't wear telescopes when he turned
a she-bear, of ordinary size, into an old he one, a little
larger than a horse?
“`Perhaps,' said I, `friends'—getting wrathy—`prehaps
you want to call somebody a liar?'
“`Oh, no,' said they, `we only heard of such things
being rather common of late, but we don't believe one
word of it; oh, no,'—and then they would ride off, and
laugh like so many hyenas over a dead nigger.
It was too much, and I determined to catch that
bear, go to Texas, or die,—and I made my preparations
accordin'.
“I had the pack shut up and rested. I took my
rifle to pieces, and iled it.
“I put caps in every pocket about my person, for
fear of the lining.
“I then told my neighbors, that on Monday morning
—naming the day—I would start THAT B(E)AR, and
bring him home with me, or they might divide my
settlement among them, the owner having disappeared.
“Well, stranger, on the morning previous to the great
day of my hunting expedition, I went into the woods
near my house, taking my gun and Bowieknife along,
just from habit, and there sitting down, also from
habit, what should I see, getting over my fence, but the
bear! Yes, the old varmint was within a hundred yards
of me, and the way he walked over that fence—stranger;
he loomed up like a black mist, he seemed so large, and
he walked right towards me.
“I raised myself, took deliberate aim, and fired.
Instantly the varmint wheeled, gave a yell, and walked
through the fence, as easy as a failing tree would
through a cobweb.
“I started after, but was tripped up by my inexpressibles,
which, either from habit or the excitement of
the moment, were about my heels, and before I had
really gathered myself up, I heard the old varmint
groaning, like a thousand sinners, in a thicket near by,
and, by the time I reached him, he was a corpse.
“Stranger, it took five niggers and myself to put that
carcass on a mule's back, and old long-ears waddled
under his load, as if he was foundered in every leg of
his body; and with a common whopper of a bear, he
would have trotted off, and enjoyed himself.
“'Twould astonish you to know how big he was:
I made a bed-spread of his skin, and the way it used
to cover my bear mattress, and leave several feet on each
side to tuck up, would have delighted you. It was, in
fact, a creation bear, and if it had lived in Samson's
time, and had met him in a fair fight, he would have
licked him in the twinkling of a dice-box.
“But, stranger, I never liked the way I hunted him,
and missed him. There is something curious about it,
that I never could understand,—and I never was satisfied
at his giving in so easy at last. Prehaps he had
heard of my preparations to hunt him the next day, so
he jist guv up, like Captain Scott's coon, to save his
wind to grunt with in dying; but that ain't likely. My
private opinion is, that that bear was an unhuntable bear,
and died when his time come.”
When this story was ended, our hero sat some minutes
was a mystery to him connected with the bear whose
death he had just related, that had evidently made a
strong impression on his mind. It was also evident
that there was some superstitious awe connected with
the affair,—a feeling common with all “children of the
wood,” when they meet with any thing out of their
every-day experience.
He was the first one, however, to break the silence,
and, jumping up, he asked all present to “liquor” before
going to bed,—a thing which he did, with a number of
companions, evidently to his heart's content.
Long before day, I was put ashore at my place of
destination, and I can only follow with the reader, in
imagination, our Arkansas friend, in his adventures at
the “Forks of Cypress,” on the Mississippi.
| THE BIG BEAR OF ARKANSAS. The hive of "The bee-hunter" | |