“Shake on it.”

So the bargain was made, the money paid, and in fifteen minutes the stranger was gone with a little Bear in each pannier of his horse.

Jill was surly and silent; Jack kept up a whining that smote on Lan’s heart with a reproachful sound, but he braced himself with, “Guess they’re better out of the way; couldn’t afford another storeroom racket,” and soon the pine forest had swallowed up the stranger, his three led horses, and the two little Bears.

“Well, I’m glad he’s gone,” said Lan, savagely, though he knew quite well that he was already scourged with repentance.  He began to set his shanty in order.  He went to the storehouse and gathered the remnants of the provisions.  After all, there was a good deal left.  He walked past the box where Jack used to sleep.  How silent it was!  He noted the place where Jack used to scratch the door to get into the cabin, and started at the thought that he should hear it no more, and told himself, with many cuss-words, that he was “mighty glad of it.”  He pottered about, doing—­doing—­oh, anything, for an hour or more; then suddenly he leaped on his pony and raced madly down the trail on the track of the stranger.  He put the pony hard to it, and in two hours he overtook the train at the crossing of the river.

“Say, pard, I done wrong.  I didn’t orter sell them little B’ars, leastwise not Jacky.  I—­I—­wall, now, I want to call it off.  Here’s yer yellow.”

“I’m satisfied with my end of it,” said the stranger, coldly.

“Well, I ain’t,” said Lan, with warmth, “an’ I want it off.”

“Ye’re wastin’ time if that’s what ye come for,” was the reply.

“We’ll see about that,” and Lan threw the gold pieces at the rider and walked over toward the pannier, where Jack was whining joyfully at the sound of the familiar voice.

“Hands up,” said the stranger, with the short, sharp tone of one who had said it before, and Lan turned to find himself covered with a .45 navy Colt.

“Ye got the drop on me,” he said; “I ain’t got no gun; but look-a here, stranger, that there little B’ar is the only pard I got; he’s my stiddy company an’ we’re almighty fond o’ each other.  I didn’t know how much I was a-goin’ to miss him.  Now look-a here:  take back yer fifty; ye give me Jack an’ keep Jill.”

“If ye got five hundred cold plunks in yaller ye kin get him; if not, you walk straight to that tree thar an’ don’t drop yer hands or turn or I’ll fire.  Now start.”

Mountain etiquette is very strict, and Lan, being without weapons, must needs obey the rules.  He marched to the distant tree under cover of the revolver.  The wail of little Jack smote painfully on his ear, but he knew the ways of the mountaineers too well to turn or make another offer, and the stranger went on.

Many a man has spent a thousand dollars in efforts to capture some wild thing and felt it worth the cost—­for a time.  Then he is willing to sell it for half cost, then for quarter, and at length he ends by giving it away.  The stranger was vastly pleased with his comical Bear cubs at first, and valued them proportionately; but each day they seemed more troublesome and less amusing, so that when, a week later, at the Bell-Cross Ranch, he was offered a horse for the pair, he readily closed, and their days of hamper-travel were over.