"Get the gun!" cried Owen. "I'll hold the lines!"
The weapon was behind the seat, under a patch of oilskin cloth, and it took Dale several seconds to secure it. By that time the bear had crossed the road, and they could hear the beast crashing along in the timber beyond.
"Where is he?"
"Gone, over there!" Owen gripped the lines tighter than ever. "Whoa, Billy! Whoa, Daisy! Whoa, I tell you, or we'll have a smash-up sure. Whoa!"
But the team was thoroughly scared, and continued to snort and plunge. Snap! went one strap and then another, and a sharp crack told that one of the runners of the sleigh was broken likewise.
The young lumbermen had been rounding a bend of the hill trail. Just ahead the road was level enough, but to the rear it sloped away to a hollow, filled with scrub pine, brushwood, and drifted snow. Owen was afraid that they would go into this hollow, and they did, with a suddenness that left them no time in which to leap to a point of safety.
Down went the sleigh, turning completely over and burying Dale and Owen beneath it. The horses came down too, and began to flounder at a furious rate in the snow and the bushes.
It looked as if both Dale and Owen might be killed as the result of the accident, but the soft snow at the bottom of the hollow saved them from all harm but a few scratches. Both sank between two rather stout bushes, while the sleigh landed on the top of the undergrowth and stuck there, just over their heads. Then the horses, by some miraculous means, gained their feet once more, and dashed down the remainder of the slope, until a line of scrub pines barred their further progress. Here they stood still, panting, but evidently satisfied that their present danger was over.
"Dale!" It was nearly a minute later when Owen crawled forth and freed his mouth from snow sufficiently to speak. "Dale, are you alive?"