"Hurry up!" Angus shouted, for the big savage below him, hearing another voice, was bristling afresh and suddenly started around the corner of the building to investigate. Just then the pony either sighted or smelt the bear, for he snorted, wheeled and broke into a gallop. "Run!" Angus yelled. "Get behind that eating-camp. Try to climb it, quick!" And not having time for more words he dropped from his perch, lit sprawling alongside his rifle, seized it, and jumped around the corner into the open in the wake of the grizzly, his hand hooked into the lever, while a long soft-nose snicked home in the chamber.
The girl, now fully alive to her danger, was running for the corner of the eating camp, and the grizzly, halfway between, was after her. So much Angus saw at a glance, and then he caught the lumbering but swift bulk fair center with the bead, and unhooked.
With the high-pitched, smacking voice of the rifle mingled the roar of the wounded grizzly. He went heels over head like a shot rabbit, came on his feet again facing the gun, took a second bullet as if it had been a pellet of bird-shot, and coughing out a fighting roar that seemed to hold all the bestial ferocity of the ages, came for Angus like a furry tornado.
There is this about a grizzly which entitles him to respect: When he charges, he charges home. This fact Angus knew very well. The bear was a scant forty yards away. Angus caught the center of him with his sights, and began to pump steadily. His entire attention was concentrated on holding the sights, and otherwise the gun seemed to shoot itself. Missing was next to impossible at that range, but so also was choice of aim. "When anything's comin' for you close up," Rennie had once advised him, "don't try to hit nowhere's special, but just hold plum' center and keep shootin'." While Angus did not consciously remember this advice, he followed it, with a dull wonder that the stream of soft-noses tearing through the great brute's vitals did not stop him. His last shot was fired at ten feet, and the hammer clicked down on an empty chamber. As the brown bulk hurled itself upon him, he lunged the rifle barrel with all his force into the yawning, white-tusked, red mouth. But as he tried to leap aside a huge paw blurred for an instant before his eyes and then blotted out the world. He went down, crushed and smothered as by the weight of mountains.
CHAPTER XV
FAITH WINTON TURNS UP
Angus came out of the darkness slowly with the weight still upon him. There was a strange, salt taste in his mouth and a rank smell in his nostrils. His head seemed pillowed, but his eyelids were gummed, and when he threw up his hand to clear them his fingers touched wetness. Then through a raw, red fog he saw a girl's face bending above him, and blue eyes that seemed misty as an April sky through showers, though perhaps it was only his uncertain vision that made them so.
"Please say something—if you can hear me!" said a low, clear voice as his senses came back fully.
"All right," he said. "I'm all right, I guess. What's holding me? What's on me?"