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another round.
    I stood there with my axe raised, watching them for a long moment. Then from up toward the house, I heard Mama calling: “Come away from there, Travis. Hurry, son! Run!”
    That spooked me. Up till then, I’d been ready to tie into that bear myself. Now, suddenly, I was scared out of my wits again. I ran toward the cabin.
    But like it was, Old Yeller nearly beat me there. I didn’t see it, of course; but Mama said that the minute Old Yeller saw we were all in theclear and out of danger, he threw the fight to that she bear and lit out for the house. The bear chased him for a little piece, but at the rate Old Yeller was leaving her behind, Mama said it looked like the bear was backing up.
    But if the big yeller dog was scared or hurt in any way when he came dashing into the house, he didn’t show it. He sure didn’t show it like we all did. Little Arliss had hushed his screaming, but he was trembling all over and clinging to Mama like he’d never let her go. And Mama was sitting in the middle of the floor, holding him up close and crying like she’d never stop. And me, I was close to crying, myself.
    Old Yeller, though, all he did was come bounding in to jump on us and lick us in the face and bark so loud that there, inside the cabin, the noise nearly made us deaf.
    The way he acted, you might have thought that bear fight hadn’t been anything more than a rowdy romp that we’d all taken part in for the fun of it.

SIX
    T ill Little Arliss got us mixed up in that bear fight, I guess I’d been looking on him about like most boys look on their little brothers. I liked him, all right, but I didn’t have a lot of use for him. What with his always playing in our drinking water and getting in the way of my chopping axe and howling his head off and chunking me with rocks when he got mad, it didn’t seem to me like he was hardly worth the bother of putting up with.
    But that day when I saw him in the spring, so helpless against the angry she bear, I learned different. I knew then that I loved him as much as Idid Mama and Papa, maybe in some ways even a little bit more.
    So it was only natural for me to come to love the dog that saved him.
    After that, I couldn’t do enough for Old Yeller. What if he was a big ugly meat-stealing rascal? What if he did fall over and yell bloody murder every time I looked crossways at him? What if he had run off when he ought to have helped with the fighting bulls? None of that made a lick of difference now. He’d pitched in and saved Little Arliss when I couldn’t possibly have done it, and that was enough for me.
    I petted him and made over him till he was wiggling all over to show how happy he was. I felt mean about how I’d treated him and did everything I could to let him know. I searched his feet and pulled out a long mesquite thorn that had become embedded between his toes. I held him down and had Mama hand me a stick with a coal of fire on it, so I could burn off three big bloated ticks that I found inside one of his ears. I washed him with lye soap and water, then rubbed salty bacon grease into his hair all over to rout the fleas. And that night after dark, when hesneaked into bed with me and Little Arliss, I let him sleep there and never said a word about it to Mama.
    I took him and Little Arliss squirrel hunting the next day. It was the first time I’d ever taken Little Arliss on any kind of hunt. He was such a noisy pest that I always figured he’d scare off the game.
    As it turned out, he was just as noisy and pesky as I’d figured. He’d follow along, keeping quiet like I told him, till he saw maybe a pretty butterfly floating around in the air. Then he’d set up a yell you could have heard a mile off and go chasing after the butterfly. Of course, he couldn’t catch it; but he would keep yelling at me to come help him. Then he’d get mad because I wouldn’t and yell still louder. Or maybe he’d stop to turn over a flat rock. Then he’d stand yelling at