The shot told, and the bullet went crashing and tearing through the skull and brain of the beast, who lay motionless for a moment, and then with a spasmodic quiver rolled over upon the ground without a spark of life in his body.
“My poor, brave friend,” said Harry, bending over the grizzly bear, “you have done me a service for which I can never pay you.”
He stooped lower and looked more closely at him. The animal never stirred. A groan of anguish escaped him, and it was his last. Speckled Beauty was as dead as his foe!
CHAPTER XI.
UNWELCOME VISITORS.
As Harry looked upon the dead body of his brute friend, he could but feel saddened and pitiful. It had followed him and Robsart for hundreds of miles, in obedience to that emotion of affection, which is a characteristic of the entire animal creation, and now it had given up its life to save him, who for days past had felt little but resentment toward it, for the mistake it had unwittingly made.
But little time was given the lad for indulgence in the finer emotions of his nature; for, while he stood leaning on his rifle, and looking down upon the mangled carcass, his ear, trained to unusual acuteness, detected the approach of something else, and he immediately raised his weapon and stood on the defensive.
“Another of those brutes,” he thought, “but there is no Speckled Beauty to help me this time, and I can not throw away a shot— Helloa!”
Well might he start with alarm, for just then the figure of an Indian warrior came out of the gloom, and walked directly toward him. Harry turned his head to see what chance there was to dart back in the darkness upon that side, but only to encounter two other red-skins fully as near as the first!
He felt that he was fairly caught, and he could do nothing but submit to the inevitable with the best grace possible under the circumstances.
The two red-skins halted but a few feet distant, and remained standing and motionless, as if to shut off any attempt to escape, while they left to the third the part of chief actor and spokesman in the business.