But he was nowhere to be seen.
“Mickey must always have his fun,” added Fred after failing to detect him. “Instead of coming out at once and letting me know how he came to do it, he fires the lucky shot, and then waits to see how I will act. My gracious! he is a bouncer!”
This last remark was excited by the carcass, which he kicked, and which shook like a mountainous mass of jelly; and as he passed around it he gained a fair idea of the immense proportions of the bear, in whose grasp he would have been as helpless as in that of a royal Bengal tiger.
“Whew! but he came mighty close to me! When I fell down I expected to feel his paws on me before I could get up. In a few seconds more it would have been all up with me.”
Several minutes passed, and nothing was seen of the Irishman, whereupon the lad concluded he might as well go back and gather the wood, which would be needed at the camp-fire.
“I wonder if there’s any more of them,” he muttered, as he began picking his way among the rocks. “If there are, why Mickey must look out for me.”
He found the sticks just as he had thrown them down and he proceeded to regather them, keeping a careful watch for another dangerous visitor. All remained quiet, however, and, making his way down the wooded slope into the open area, he looked back and found that he was still alone. So it continued until he returned to where the two mustangs were tethered. There he carefully adjusted the sticks and prepared everything, after which he began to feel some impatience at the non-appearance of his friend.
“He must see more fun in that kind of thing than I do. There’s no telling what has become of those six Apaches we left down in the cave. I feel sure that they’ve got above ground again. It won’t take long for them to find their mustangs, or some other horses, and they may be a mile away, and there may be other parties close by. Halloa!”
Fred thought that he had no matches about his person; but he was making a sort of aimless hunt when he found a solitary lucifer at the bottom of his pocket. This he carefully struck against the rock behind him, and in a few minutes the camp-fire was started and burning merrily.
As he sat down to wait he looked toward the point where the Irishman had vanished from sight. There he was, bearing on his shoulders some choice sections of a young antelope he had shot, although Fred recalled that he had not heard the report of his gun, except when the grizzly was shot. As Mickey came along over the same path taken by the boy, he was forced to make a detour around the carcass of the bear. He paused to survey it, his whole manner betraying great astonishment, as if he had never beheld anything of the kind. He walked around the body several times, punched it with his foot, and finally, grasping his twenty pounds of meat in his right hand, approached the camp-fire.