IV. 

 TWIN BABIES. 



These twin babies were black. They 

 were black as coal. Indeed, they were 

 blacker than coal, for they glistened in 

 their oily blackness. They were young baby 

 bears; and so exactly alike that no one 

 could, in any way, tell the one from the 

 other. And they were orphans. They 

 had been found at the foot of a small cedar 

 tree on the banks of the Sacramento River, 

 near the now famous Soda Springs, found 

 by a tow-headed boy who was very fond 

 of bears and hunting. 



But at the time the twin babies were 

 found Soda Springs was only a wild camp, 

 or way station, on the one and only trail 

 that wound through the woods and up and 

 down mountains for hundreds of miles, 

 connecting the gold fields of California 

 with the pastoral settlements away to the 



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