“I will not kill you, brother,” he said. “I am hungry, but I give you your life because your mother saved me from the Cherokee. Do not blame me for putting smoke into your eyes. You shall go back and sleep.”
The bear was still rubbing his eyes and complaining. The Hunter stole around him and scattered the smoking leaves.
“The way is clear, brother,” said the Hunter; and he went a little distance, and looked back, and saw the bear just disappearing into the hollow again.
“Wah!” Robert remarked. “He was fat meat, and we all are hungry, but maybe I will find something else.”
Prowling on he stopped next at a cave under a rock ledge, much like the place in which White Thunder and Aroas and he had slept when upon the march to the Delawares, only deeper.
Dusk was gathering in the forest. Peering into the cave he could see white bones; he also heard a faint rustle; but what made the rustle he could not see, for the cave was crooked. But something growled low, and that was not a bear.
The bones were not bones from a bear feast, either; clean picked they were, but were not crushed. The Hunter cautiously crawled in, stooping, his bow and arrow advanced ready to be drawn and loosed. His nose told him of animals. The rustling had ceased, but the growling announced that the animal was at home. The floor rose, so that the space between floor and roof grew narrower; and when he came to a black hole just about large enough for him, but not large enough to turn around in, he stopped. All the cave was humming with that growl.
“Whoever you are, you are not good eating,” said the Hunter. “Stay there, for I am going.”
Maybe the animal answered “Sour grapes” and maybe it only laughed. Anyway, Robert began to crawl backward; and then his feet twitched, and he felt like hurrying, for he heard another, louder growl behind him. Hurry he did, until he could twist about. And when he straightened up, at the threshold, he confronted the owner of the cave.