For perhaps half an hour they continued in silence; then once again Louise stopped abruptly, her hand rigid in Linda's. There were footsteps behind them!
"A bear!" she whispered, in fright.
Pulling her cautiously aside, Linda broke off a stick from a tree, and turned about to face the enemy. There was no use trying to run—why they could hardly hobble. And in the darkness, what hope was there of finding a tree to climb?
To her intense amazement, she saw nothing, and she dared not turn on her flashlight. Tensely she waited, until a shot rang out in the woods and broke the stillness of the night. A gun at least meant a human hand, and both girls immediately let out a piteous cry of "Help!"
"Yo—ho!" came the welcome, answering reply!
Chapter XI
Prisoners
When the shot of the gun rang through the woods, the startled girls heard scampering feet behind them, and knew that the animal, whatever it was, had been frightened away. Again they had had a marvelous escape, for they might have been wounded by the unseen hunter's gun. What irony it would have been, to jump from an airplane in parachutes, only to be killed by a human hand!
Desperately they clung to each other, satisfied now by the answering call that there would be more shots until they were located. Rescue was surely at hand; the question now arose: what sort of human being had them at his mercy?