The Devil made a Twin

by Brooke Duran ________________________________________ Four men once came to a damp location in the untroden woodland to fish. They set up their tent fair upon the summit of a pine-clothed point of divided rocks whence a sarsen could be made to hit through the brush and rotate past the trees to the lake under. On sweet-smelling hemlock tree branches they catnapped the nap of fruitless fishermen, for upon the lake one after the other the sun made them slothful and the rain made them unfortunately damp. To close they consumed the final bit of bacon and smoked and burned the final horrendous and brilliant hoecake. Instantly a slight man offered to stay and hold the camp while the residual three should go the Monty county miles to a farm for provisions. They looked at him grimly. "There's only one of you--the devil makes up a twin," they said in farewell spell, and faded down the slope in the seen track of an aloof bungalow. When it became nighttime and the hemlock trees began to snivel they had not revisited the area. The slight man sat near to his acquantance, the campfire, and refreshed it with logs. He panted angrily at a thick constructed briar, and watched a thousand outlines which were about to attack him. Abruptly he caught the method of the unidentified, crunching the branches and swooshing the deceased greeneries. The slight man ascended deliberately to his feet, his clothes rejected to fit his back, his pipe fell from his mouth, his knees struck another. "Aha!" he bawled roughly in peril. A rumble answered and a bear strode into the illumination of the campfire. The slight man sustained himself upon a scion and considered his guest.

The bear was unmistakably an expert and a rebel, for the black of his fur had become tawny-brown through the years, as if with age. There was sureness in his walk and conceit in his small, shining eye. He bowled back his jaws and revealed his white teeth. The blaze enlarged the red of his jaw. The slight man hadn’t ever before opposed the dreadful and he couldn’t pull it from his chest. "Grah!" he thundered. The bear read this as the contest of a warrior. He advanced cagily. As he came nearer to the beat, the thighboots of fright were speedily surrounding the slight man’s feet. He bawled out and then dashed around the campfire. "Humph!" expressed the bear to himself, "this thing won't want any victory against me—instead it runs. Well, I guess I catch it." So upon his characteristics there set the predatory look of going—somewhere, anywhere. He began severely around the campfire, almost in a four-legged limp, for sake of the short distance. The slight man skreiched and darted energeticallh. Two more times around they went. The way to salvation sometimes falls severely upon the mortal. The bear increased. In fear the slight man fdove into the tent. The bear ceased his run and smelt at the entering. He smelled the odor of a great many men. To finish he had the audacity to enter in. The slight man hunkered in a isolated corner. The bear moved forward, worming, his blood enflamed, his hair stiffly pointed upward, his cheeks drenched. The slight man shouted and swooshed awkwardly under the flap at the end of the tent. The bear roared horribly and made a leap and a speedy clutch at his vanishing toy. The slight man, now tentless, felt a huge paw grab his coat tails. He writhed and twisted leaving his coat behind like a schoolboy in the hands of an avenger. The bear careened gloriously and shook the coat into the tent and took two bites, a punch and a hug before he, realized his man was not in it. Then he grew not very mad, for a bear on an extravaganza is not a dark-souled buccaneer. He is simply a thug. He lay down on his back, took the coat on his four paws and began to play racously with it. The most atrocious, blood-curdling roars and bowls came to where the slight man was wailing in a foilage and restricted his blood. He bemoaned a slight language meant for a prayer and cleaved convulsively to the winding twigs. He looked with crying melancholy at where his companion, the blaze, was giving disappearing glimmers and snaps. In conclusion, there was a roar from the tent which outshone all roars; a sneer which it gave the impression would quake the dull hush of the elevation and cause it to move its stone shoulders. The slight man cowered and shrank to a grip and a pair of eyes. In the glimmering of the cinders he saw the white tent spasm and fall with a bang. The bear's happy game had distracted the center pole and brought a turmoil of canvas upon his head. Now the slight man became the observer of a immense sight. The tent began to flail. It took collapsing paces towards the lake. Wonderful sounds came from within--rips and tears, and great groans and pants. The slight man went into giggling hysterics, in spite of himself. The tangled fiend failed to extract himself before he had thuped the tent widly to the very edge of the mountain. So it came to pass that three men, scrambling up the hill with bundles and baskets, saw their tent coming nigh. It seemed to them like a white-robed spirit hunted by hornets. Its whines undulated the hemlock twigs. The three men let go of their bundles and scurried to one side, their eyes gleaming with fear. The canvass flood swept past them. They rested, feeble and dumb, against trees and listened, their blood completely still. Below them it struck the foundation of a great pine tree, where it struggled and fought. The three bore witness to its involvedness a moment and then started incredibly for the top of the hill. As they vanished, the bear cut loose with a huge exertion. He cast one unkempt and agonized look at the white thing, and then started enthusiastically for the inner breaks of the woodland. The three fear-stricken persons ran to the recreated fire. The slight man rested by it tranquilly smoking. They leaped at him and overcame him with cross-examinations. He considered dimness and took a long, ostentatious puff. "There is only one of me--and the devil made a twin," he explained.