"No, indeed, that word 'courage' has to be defined new for each case.Thar's old Tom Harris over on the Canadian.I beholds Tom one time at Tascosa do the most b'ar-faced trick; one which most sports of common sens'bilities would have shrunk from.Thar's a warrant out for Tom, an' Jim East the sheriff puts his gun on Tom when Tom's lookin' t'other way.
"'See yere, Harris!' says East, that a-way.
"Tom wheels, an' is lookin' into the mouth of East's six-shooter not a yard off.
"'Put up your hands!' says East.
"But Tom don't.He looks over the gun into East's eye; an' he freezes him.Then slow an' delib'rate, an' glarin' like a mountain lion at East, Tom goes back after his Colt's an' pulls it.He lays her alongside of East's with the muzzle p'intin' at East's eye.An'
thar they stands."'You don't dar' shoot!' says Tom; an' East don't.
"They breaks away an' no powder burned; Tom stands East off.
"'Warrant or no warrant,' says Tom, 'all the sheriffs that ever jingles a spur in the Panhandle country, can't take me! Nor all the rangers neither!' An' they shore couldn't."Now this yere break-away of Tom's, when East gets the drop that time, takes courage.It ain't one gent in a thousand who could make that trip but Tom.An' yet this yere Tom is feared of a dark room."Take Injuns;--give 'em their doo, even if we ain't got room for them miscreants in our hearts.On his lines an' at his games, a Injun is as clean strain as they makes.He's got courage, an' can die without battin' an eye or waggin' a y'ear, once it's come his turn.An' the squaws is as cold a prop'sition as the bucks.After a fight with them savages, when you goes 'round to count up an' skin the game, you finds most as many squaws lyin' about, an' bullets through 'em, as you finds bucks.
"Courage is sometimes knowledge, sometimes ignorance; sometimes courage is desp'ration, an' then ag'in it's innocence."Once, about two miles off, when I'm on the Staked Plains, an' near the aige where thar's pieces of broken rock, I observes a Mexican on foot, frantically chunkin' up somethin'.He's left his pony standin' off a little, an' has with him a mighty noisy form of some low kind of mongrel dog, this latter standin' in to worry whatever it is the Mexican's chunkin' at, that a-way.I rides over to investigate the war-jig; an' I'm a mesquite digger! if this yere transplanted Castillian ain't done up a full-grown wild cat! It's jest coughin'
its last when I arrives.Son, I wouldn't have opened a game on that feline--the same bein' as big as a coyote, an' as thoroughly organized for trouble as a gatling--with anythin' more puny than a Winchester.An' yet that guileless Mexican lays him out with rocks, and regyards sech feats as trivial.An American, too, by merely growlin' towards this Mexican, would make him quit out like a jack rabbit."As I observes prior, courage is frequent the froots of what a gent don't know.Take grizzly b'ars.Back fifty years, when them squirrel rifles is preevalent; when a acorn shell holds a charge of powder, an' bullets runs as light an' little as sixty-four to the pound, why son! you-all could shoot up a grizzly till sundown an'
hardly gain his disdain.It's a fluke if you downs one.That sport who can show a set of grizzly b'ar claws, them times, has fame.
They're as good as a bank account, them claws be, an' entitles said party to credit in dance hall, bar room an' store, by merely slammin' 'em on the counter."At that time the grizzly b'ar has courage.Whyever does he have it, you asks? Because you couldn't stop him; he's out of hoomanity's reach--a sort o' Alexander Selkirk of a b'ar, an' you couldn't win from him.In them epocks, the grizzly b'ar treats a gent contemptuous.He swats him, or he claws him, or he hugs him, or he crunches him, or he quits him accordin'
to his moods, or the number of them engagements which is pressin' on him at the time.An' the last thing he considers is the feelin's of that partic'lar party he's dallyin' with.Now, however, all is changed.Thar's rifles, burnin' four inches of this yere fulminatin'
powder, that can chuck a bullet through a foot of green oak.Wisely directed, they lets sunshine through a grizzly b'ar like he's a pane of glass.An', son, them b'ars is plumb onto the play.
"What's the finish? To-day you can't get clost enough to a grizzly to hand him a ripe peach.Let him glimpse or smell a white man, an'
he goes scatterin' off across hill an' canyon like a quart of licker among forty men.They're shore apprehensife of them big bullets an'
hard-hittin' guns, them b'ars is; an' they wouldn't listen to you, even if you talks nothin' but bee-tree an' gives a bond to keep the peace besides.Yes, sir; the day when the grizzly b'ar will stand without hitchin' has deeparted the calendar a whole lot.They no longer attempts insolent an' coarse familiar'ties with folks.
Instead of regyardin' a rifle as a rotton cornstalk in disguise, they're as gun-shy as a female institoote.Big b'ars an' little bars, it's all sim'lar; for the old ones tells it to the young, an'
the lesson is spread throughout the entire nation of b'ars.An'
yere's where you observes, enlightenment that a-way means a-weakenin' of grizzly-b'ar courage.
