Tom laughed, but was kind-hearted enough not to say, “I told you so.”
You may imagine the fright the boys gave their parents when they arrived home wounded, limping, and blood-stained; but soon all was told, and Balser and Tom were the heroes of the settlement.
They had killed the most dangerous animal that had ever lived on Blue River, and had conquered where old and experienced hunters had failed.
The huge carcass of the bear was brought home that evening, and when the skin was removed, his backbone was found to have been cut almost through by Tom’s hatchet.
When they cut the bear open somebody said he had two galls, and that fact, it was claimed, accounted for his fierceness.
Where the bear had sprung from when the boys first saw him in the forest, or how he had managed to disappear into the ground at the top of the hill was never satisfactorily explained. Some settlers insisted that he had not been inhabited by an evil spirit, else the boys could not have killed him, but others clung to the belief with even greater faith and persistency.
“Balser rushed into the fight.”
Liney went every day to see Balser, who was confined to his bed for a fortnight.
One day, while she was sitting by him, and no one else was in the room, he asked her to hand him his buckskin jacket; the one he had worn on the day of the bear fight. The jacket was almost in shreds from the frightful claws of the bear, and tears came to the girl’s eyes as she placed it on the bed.