“Tell me who else could?” demanded the other.
“Oh! I’m not sayin’ they did; don’t think that,” Giraffe went on; “but we happen to know there are a couple of men hanging around this section of the country.”
“Meaning Hank and Pierre, of course?”
“Yes, they’re the dodgers. Now, you see, they just might have come up here, found the bear holdin’ Bumpus up in a tree, and took a notion to knock the old mountain bear silly, just so they could look our chum over, and take all he had.”
Step Hen was unable to hazard a reply to this, and so he appealed to those who ought to be able to decide.
“How about that, Thad, Allan?”
Both shook their heads in the negative.
“Give Bumpus all the credit of downing this bear,” Thad remarked.
“There are lots of things that go to prove it,” said Allan. “Look here, and I’ll show you. See, here’s where he knelt to fire, first of all, and I want you to notice what a dandy tree for climbing Bumpus picked out, just alongside.”
“And when he’d rammed in both charges, only to see the bear coming full tilt after him, like a house afire, Bumpus swung up in the tree—is that it, Allan?” and Giraffe looked wise as he said this.