A GRIZZLY SHOWS FIGHT
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.