We had packed up the campsite and I was inside the lean-to that everyone kept referring to as the cabin. The size of a decent walk-in closet the rickety shed was far from a cabin but I stopped correcting them after soon coming to the conclusion that it would fall on deaf ears. And they'd left me the most useless utensil known to man. An unloaded gun. No big deal. Frank was in charge of packing up the ammo and he'd done the job almost to a fair thee well. Hanging from a rusted hook that would have made Peter Pan's nemesis proud, my S&W Model 29 was empty and ready for the travel home when the first shudder ran through the cabin. Something was outside, something big was outside, and wanted in. The door sprang a bracer-bar as it began buckling inward, holding on for dear life and looking like something from a Kubrick horror flick. Rubber bends like that, not wood, not even old wet wormy wood, but this one did. Either the fellas's were playing a joke on me or something nasty was a push & shove away from making my acquaintance so I snatched the 29 from it's holster and gave one last frantic looksee for ammo.

Midway Pin Grabbers. Used exclusively for pin matches, the bullets were tipped with a jagged edge, just the thing for sending recalcitrant bowling pins flying from their perches but who had ever used such a thing for what had to be, just had to be a hungry black bear on the prowl? But Frank had forgotten to pack the old box of them he'd brought along that we'd never gotten around to using so I opened the flap and am proud to say I only dropped one round while feeding the revolver.

Slam. The shed shook stem to stern, the door buckled nearly off it's ancient hinge, and sure enough it was a huge blackie on his hind legs with a not to be denied look about him. The cabin wouldn't take another push so I took aim, center of the door, and about chin high to myself and let off a round. It coincided with his last mighty heave and the center of the door exploded outward and so did the bear. From fright. A .44 magnum is one helluva round but it's not knocking a 500 pound bear off his feet so the creature must have thought that the door reared up and bit him. Next thing I knew there were more rounds going off outside and stepping over the wreck of the doorway I saw the beast lying there not 15 feet away. Frank and Doc had finished him off with their 30-30's and it wasn't until just an hour or so ago I remembered the Midway Pin Grabbers from an old advertisement I came across.

Still don't know how they did on pins. Do know they downed the biggest blackie I'd ever seen. Nowhere's near a record, bears in that neck of the woods went 600 easy and just last December a hunter shot a 750 pounder that was terrorizing the locals. The fella who owned the land we'd camped on hooked it up to his Deere and dragged the carcass to a horse weighing scale a mile or so down the road, and 535 pounds of teeth and muscle is nothing to sneeze at.

Frank always left something behind. For years it was always watch Frank pack then follow behind him snatching up what he'd miss. And just that once I was glad. Nearly kissed the old fool smack on the bald spot.

But it was Pennsylvania not Brokeback Mountain so I just shook his hand.