"Of your bear?" he repeated in blank amazement.
"Yes. Have you seen anything of him? I'm a little near-sighted and——"
Sir Bryan Parkhurst never shirked a dilemma.
"I've just shot a bear," he blurted out, "but I hope, with all my heart, it wasn't yours!"
"Shot a bear?" cried the girl, in consternation. "Oh! how could you?"
Before Sir Bryan could reach out a helping hand, her feet were on the ground.
"Where is he? Oh! where is he?" she cried in tragic accents.
Sir Bryan pointed to the prostrate form of the murdered bear. Alas! It must have been her bear, for she knelt down beside him, and gazed upon him long and mournfully.
And truly there was something pathetic about the victim, viewed from this new standpoint. He lay on his side, exposing the wound, which was clotted with blood. His small eyes were open, and a red tongue just visible between his parted teeth. One short, rigid, foreleg was stretched out as though in remonstrance, and just within its embrace a fading spray of gilia lifted its fragile blossoms.
Sir Bryan stood lost in contemplation of this singular scene; the graceful figure of the kneeling girl, bending over the mass of coarse brown fur; the flower, standing unscathed close beside the long, destructive claws. A few yards away, the horse lazily whisked his tail, while to the right the frowning crags rose, so near and steep that they seemed about to topple over and make an end of the improbable situation.