The noise was bewildering as it echoed among the barren hills and rocks.
"See! There's a black animal chasing them!" exclaimed Holden excitedly.
"A bear," said Mackintosh with grim calmness, as he rapidly slung his repeating rifle into readiness, an example that the boys quickly followed.
"What's to be done?" Bob questioned. Frankly he had not the remotest notion how to meet such an emergency, for it was impossible to climb upwards, as it was equally impossible to descend, while to retire along the path would only be to postpone the threatening disaster for a few minutes.
"Come! Follow me quickly; but be careful," Mackintosh suddenly ordered, he himself hastening forward as the boys followed.
At this position the side of the hill bent to the left in the form of a horseshoe, so that it was quite easy from where the three adventurers stood to throw a stone across the intervening chasm to the path at the other side.
Mackintosh led the way until he had reached the first spur; then he told the boys to wait.
"Keep your hands steady and your guns ready, boys," he said. "I'm going along a bit to shoot down the leaders, if it may be; you empty your rifle and a round or two o' shot into yon bear. They'll all be opposite us on the other side in a few minutes. A steady nerve will do it; so, if ever you were cool in your born days, this is the day to be coolest."
Without waiting for further remark from either side, the man then hastened some yards along the path and took up a position where he could kneel and steady his gun arm on a boulder, and hardly had the several positions been taken up when with roar and clatter and cloud the stampede rounded the opposite hill-spur.
Crack! went the Scotsman's repeater. Crack! crack! And down tumbled three sheep, two of which rolled over the slope, leaving one to bar the way in the path. The others took the downward plunge. Crack! crack! crack! The rifle spoke rapidly and surely, as each bullet found a billet in a different animal.