I Survived the San Francisco Earthquake, 1906

That night, Leo can’t sleep as he sits on his “flea-bitten horse blanket that he use[s] as a bed” (21). All he can think about is tricking Fletch and Wilkie into giving him his gold back. It reminds him of a story about his Grandpop, in which he tricked a grizzly bear. Grandpop traveled across America at 16 years old, during the gold rush in California. Along the way he’d been held up by bandits, had a close encounter with a rattlesnake, and finally came face to face with a giant grizzly bear. Even though Grandpop wanted to run, “no one can outrun a grizzly […] All travelers are told this. And yet most men can’t help themselves” (23) and run anyway. Grandpop, however, realized he needed to do something else to escape the bear: He had to scare it.

In his pocket, Grandpop had the rattle of the snake that nearly bit him earlier on his journey. He had cut it off for good luck after he killed the snake. Grandpop began to shake the rattle, hoping “he could trick [the bear] into thinking that he was some kind of huge rattlesnake-man” (26-27).