CHAPTER XV.
Bowlegs and Major Ben.
"Which this yere Major Ben," remarked the Old Cattleman, "taken in conjunction with his bosom pard, Billy Bowlaigs, frames up the only casooalty which gets inaug'rated in Wolfville." "What!" I interjected; "don't you consider the divers killings,--the death of the Stinging Lizard and the Dismissal of Silver Phil, to say nothing of the taking off of the Man from Red Dog--don't you, I say, consider such bloody matters casualties ?" "No, sir," retorted my friend, emitting the while sundry stubborn puffs of smoke, "no, sir; I regyards them as results.

Tharfore, I reiterates that this yere Major Ben an' Bowlaigs accomplishes between 'em the only troo casooalty whereof Wolfville has a record." At this he paused and surveyed me with an eye of challenge; after a bit, perceiving that I proposed no further contradiction, he went on: "This Billy Bowlaigs at first is a cub b'ar--a black cub b'ar: an' when he grows up to manhood, so to speak, he's as big, an' mighty near as strong physical, as Dan Boggs.

Nacherally, however, Dan lays over Bowlaigs mental like a ace-full.
"It's Dave Tutt who makes Bowlaigs captive; Dave rounds Bowlaigs up in his infancy one time when he's pesterin' about over in the foothills of the Floridas lookin' for blacktail deer.

Dave meets up with Bowlaigs an' the latter's mother who's out, evident, on a scout for grub.
Bowlaig's mother has jest upturned a rotten pine-log to give little Bowlaigs a chance to rustle some of these yere egreegious white worms which looks like bald catapillars, that a-way, when all at once around a p'int of rocks Dave heaves in view.

This parent of Bowlaigs is as besotted about her son as many hooman mothers; for while Bowlaigs stands almost as high as she does an' weighs clost onto two hundred pounds, the mother b'ar still has the idee tangled up in her intelligence that Bowlaigs is that small an' he'pless, day-old kittens is se'f-sustainin' citizens by compar'son to him.