“Yes. And I think he must have been hurt some, because he seemed to drag his left hind leg a little.”
“P’raps Bumpus plugged him,” Giraffe suggested, just as though he were speaking of some celebrated forest ranger, accustomed to meeting up with these terrors of the Rockies, rather than a fat scout who, up to recently, had been looked upon by most of his comrades as something of a joke.
“No, Bumpus was some distance away right here,” Allan continued. “There is no sign of blood, so we know from that the injury was not a fresh one. And besides, whoever heard of a full-grown grizzly running away from a dozen human enemies, after being shot and wounded, much less from a single foe, and he a boy?”
“You’re right, Allan,” commented the scoutmaster.
“Reckon it does look that way,” Giraffe admitted.
There was one good trait about the tall scout—no matter how strong an opinion he might have on any subject, once convinced of the error of his thinking, and Giraffe would own up to his mistake most cheerfully.
“So right here,” Step Hen broke in, “Bumpus was on the run, achasin’ fast after the limpin’ grizzly? Say, Giraffe, he was in your class of cripples, because Allan says it was his left hind leg that was hurt.”
“Well, I ain’t got but one left leg so that makes all the difference,” the tall scout hastened to announce.
“I wonder—” began Step Hen, and then paused, as though hardly daring to frame his thoughts in words.
“We’re all doing that,” remarked Allan.