  Toma and Dick were already on their feet when Sandy rushed toward them out of the gloom. “It’s a bear, a giant bear!” cried Sandy. “Run! I’ve wounded him!” The angry roar behind Sandy was all that was needed for Dick and Toma to take to their heels with alacrity. “Get up tree, get up tree!” Toma called to them. Faster than they ever before had climbed a tree, Dick and Sandy shinned up one in the dark. The bear charged beneath them in the underbrush. The huge beast wheeled on finding his prey had taken to the trees and circled the trunk which supported Dick and Sandy. Toma’s calm voice came through the gloom from a near-by tree: “Him grizzly all right,” Toma told them. “You stay in tree. I get down to rifle pretty quick.” “You surely must have wounded the bear,” Dick whispered to Sandy. “I’ve heard they won’t attack unless they’re wounded.” “I don’t know what I did,” Sandy came back breathlessly. “I just blazed away and ran. Believe me, I don’t want to go down there again while that monster is wandering around looking for me. He’d chew us up in about two bites and a half.” Dick knew that Sandy’s caution bump was working again, and he smiled in the dark. He did not intend to let Toma go down after the bear alone. Yet he believed the young Indian would protest if he revealed his intentions. “Got your rifle?” Dick called to Toma, not intimating his resolution. “I got gun,” Toma called back. “I wish I’d thought to bring mine along,” Dick muttered, “but then it takes an Indian to shin up a tree with a heavy rifle in his hand I suppose. Anyway I have my knife.” “Don’t go down, Dick,” whispered Sandy, as the bear crashed about in the brush below them. “Nonsense, Sandy, I’ve got as much chance as Toma. We can’t let that bear wreck our camp. That’s what he’s up to.” “Then I’ll go down too,” Sandy stubbornly decided. They could not hear Toma’s movements with the bear making so much noise, but Dick suspected the guide already had slipped down from his tree and was stalking the wounded grizzly, perhaps close enough to get in a fatal shot. Presently, they could hear the bear make off into the gloom toward the campfire. When Dick and Sandy dropped down out of the tree, the bear seemed to be on the other side of the campfire, clawing and mouthing over their dunnage. “You better stay up in the tree,” Dick said. “Not on your tintype,” Sandy snapped. “If you go, I go.” “Well, then, we’ve got to get our guns,” said Dick. “Mine’s right where I got out of my blankets.” “Seems to me I dropped mine just before I started climbing the tree,” Sandy was feeling around in the dark. “Yes, here it is,” was his triumphant call. Toma seemingly had vanished. Since his last words, they had heard nothing more from him. Dick judged the guide was stalking the bear from some other direction. At any moment he expected to hear the report of the Indian’s rifle, and see the flash of it in the gloom. Sandy alone armed, save for Dick’s hunting knife, the boys began a stealthy advance toward the camp where they could hear the bear slashing and groveling about, evidently in some pain, for they were sure now that Sandy’s shot had taken effect. The coals of the campfire shed a faint glow. As the boys drew nearer, on hands and knees, they could see the bulk of the grizzly outlined. He seemed a mammoth of his kind, and indeed was a fearful beast to meet in the forest. “I’ll bet he’s wrecked our camp outfit,” Dick muttered. “Careful, Sandy, don’t get too close. Let’s wait till he gets away from the fire a little further, then I can get my rifle.” Scarcely were the words out of his mouth, when Toma’s rifle crashed in the dark on the left, and Dick and Sandy saw a streak of flame, and heard the roar of the bear, plainly hard hit. The grizzly rose upon his hind legs and turned toward the spot he believed his enemy was hidden. Then Sandy leveled his rifle and fired, drawing bead as best he could just under the huge beast’s forelegs. At this second shot, the bear seemed undecided just which way to charge. He stopped, his head turning from side to side, growling horribly, not hit hard enough to fall. Toma shot again, then Sandy. The grizzly dropped to all fours, and began clawing at his breast. Toma shot again from another position. The bear rose up again with a roar of pain and rage and started for Dick and Sandy, who turned to flee. Then the big beast, without any apparent reason whatsoever, wheeled about and made off into the forest in the opposite direction. “He’s hit hard!” cried Dick, hurrying forward. Toma came out of the gloom like a shadow. “He go off die,” said the Indian. “Be careful he no come back. I go see where he go.” Toma disappeared after cautioning the boys to stay where they were until he returned. The minutes passed slowly while Dick and Sandy waited the return of Toma. Finally Dick grew impatient and was about to go on to the campfire for his rifle, when Toma appeared again, as if he had risen out of the earth. “She all right,” Toma reported. “Him keep going. Him die somewhere.” Relieved, Dick and Sandy approached the campfire. Toma already was heaping on more wood. As the flames leaped upward, and the light chased away some of the surrounding shadows, Dick and Sandy breathed freely once more. However, sleep was far from them after the narrow escape from being clawed by the wounded bear. They ventured about to see what damage the big grizzly had effected. They found Dick’s and Toma’s blankets torn to shreds. The coffee pot was crushed flat and the sugar sack broken open, its contents scattered. Dick hurried to the bough where they had hung the flour and bacon. “Hey, look here—Sandy, Toma!” They joined Dick. The bough had been broken down; the flour was scattered about as if the sack had exploded; the bacon was gone. Searching about in the gloom they found hunks of chewed rind among the pine needles. Only one small chunk of bacon was left, and this they preserved in one of their knapsacks. “Him no hungry,” Toma grunted, “him play. Him chew bacon up, spit him out.” “Well, he did us plenty of damage all right,” Dick said ruefully. “Looks like we were in for a hungry spell,” Sandy added, resignedly. “Humph! We have bear steak for breakfast,” Toma exclaimed significantly. “That’s what I call justice,” Dick laughed. All three went back to the campfire then and squatted around the crackling flames. The excitement had loosened Toma’s tongue, it seemed, and he began telling stories of other bears he had known, and whom his father had known. Dick and Sandy listened with rapt interest to the simple tales of the young Indian. Almost the balance of the night passed with Toma’s droning voice relating thrilling adventures among the tribes in the far north. Toward dawn Sandy turned in for an hour or so of rest, but Toma and Dick remained awake. The sun had scarcely topped the distant forest skyline when Dick and Toma awakened Sandy, and all three gathered up what they could of the wreckage remaining of their provisions. “Now we gettum bear steak,” Toma said. In single file they followed the gliding figure of the guide, as he set off on the trail of the grizzly. “See that track!” Dick exclaimed presently, pointing with his rifle at a spot of soft leaf-mold. “It’s a bear track, all right,” conceded Sandy, “—and look! There’s blood on that bush.” “We sure hit him a lot of times—I mean you and Toma,” Dick corrected. He felt disappointed that he had not actually been in on the killing of the bear, since he had had no rifle. But the thrill of trailing a wounded grizzly made him forget. Toma seemed to follow the trail as if by instinct. Where Sandy and Dick could see no sign whatever, Toma went unerringly forward, always with that gliding, noiseless, pigeon-toed pace, that seemed tireless, though it was kept up with an ease and speed that made Dick and Sandy run. For a half mile they wound among the trees, beginning to come upon spots where the bear had dropped down to rest. At these points the blood was drying in large clots. Finally, approaching a fallen tree, they came upon the grizzly, stone dead! Dick and Sandy were about to cheer, yet the actual sight of the bear made them a little sad. The great monarch of the forest never again would proudly tread the forest aisles. Yet the boys felt a certain satisfaction in having won in a battle with such a powerful foe. Toma immediately began skinning one haunch of the great bear. “Him old and tough,” grunted Toma, “but we cook um long time. That make um tender.” Dick laughed. “The old boy will make stringy eating.” “I wish we could take his hide,” Sandy sighed. “It sure would knock the eyes out of the fellows back home,” Dick said. “No time to skin,” Toma interrupted. “Hide too heavy carry. Mister Mackenzie say mus’ travel light.” “Yes, it’s impossible for us to have the old fellow’s hide, but that’s no reason why we can’t have his scalp.” Suiting his action to his words, Dick drew his sharp hunting knife and stooped over the head of the wilderness king. With Sandy’s help they took the old grizzly’s scalp, ears and all, as a trophy. “It’s yours and Toma’s,” Dick smiled, when they had finished. He held the scalp out to Sandy. Sandy’s eyes lightened. “Let Toma have the scalp. I’ll take the claws.” Dick’s hunting knife once more came into play. The bear’s claws measured as long as five inches, and Sandy was exceedingly proud as he at last pushed them into a side pocket of his leather coat. Toma was waiting when they had finished. The guide had his knapsack filled with the tenderest steaks he could cut. At a jog trot they set out for the river and their campsite, and soon they were grilling bear steaks over the fire. When they broke camp they had provisions for two scanty meals, including some of the bear steaks which they saved from breakfast. The canoe packed, they once more set out down the river. “We make um grub cache tomorrow,” Toma encouraged them. “Get um plenty grub there.” Late that afternoon, without mishap they reached a point where Toma said they must abandon their canoe and go on by land, since the river swung off in another direction. They carefully hid their canoe in some underbrush along with two others left by a party that had recently gone on ahead of them, and started out on foot. Dick and Sandy were very tired long before Toma showed signs of slowing up, but they gamely stuck to the pace without complaint. They were angling down the side of a long ravine, toward a spring, which Toma muttered would be a good place to camp, when of a sudden, the guide stopped dead. “Hide quick!” Toma whispered, with a significant gesture of one sinewy brown hand. Dick and Sandy crouched. “Think um bad fellas ahead,” Toma explained. “You stay here. I go ahead; look um over.” Dick and Sandy were glad to sink down and rest their weary legs. But the warning in Toma’s voice did not escape them. They were keyed to sharp watchfulness as Toma dropped to his hands and knees and disappeared silently among the bushes. |
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