“Hold on! Don’t move!” he cried. “I’m going to see if I can’t slip down and get the gun.”
He was perching in a beech tree with long and spreading branches, and he had already observed that one of these lower limbs drooped to less than a man’s height from the earth. Carl began to creep out on this branch, as soundlessly as he could, but despite his care he thought he saw the bear move its head and look at him.
The branch sagged heavily under his weight as he went further out. He was six or eight feet from the trunk, and on the side farthest from the bear, and he hesitated for several seconds. He could see Alice watching him anxiously from her tree.
Finally he made up his mind, swung off, and dropped to earth with the spring of the bough. It swished back with a tremendous crackling of twigs, and Carl bolted headlong for the place where he had lost the rifle.
He had no doubt that the bear was pursuing him. He dodged around a beehive and glanced over his shoulder, but saw nothing of the animal. Striking a match, he bent over the earth and was lucky enough to catch the blue glint of the rifle-barrel almost at once.
With a great feeling of relief he picked it up, tried the action and put in a fresh cartridge. The bear had made no sign, and now Carl assumed the aggressive and marched back toward his tree, holding the rifle ready.
He could see the bear plainly, lying in the shadow of the beech, but it did not stir. A suspicion began to grow in Carl’s mind. Advancing a little nearer, he threw a lump of wood, hitting the prostrate animal fairly, but still it did not move. Carl chuckled to himself, walked closer, inspected the bear cautiously, and ventured to punch it in the side with the rifle-muzzle.
“Come down, Allie!” he called. “It’s all right. He’s dead!”
There was a crackling of twigs as Alice slipped down, and then came to look, astonished and almost unbelieving.
“Dead? What killed it?”