“Tom Turner was following up a grizzly, who was well on ahead, so he had eyes for nothing else; but on rounding a point on the hill-top, he was startled with a roar that went through him like a rip-saw, and found himself face to jowl with a cinnamon bear. Tom sprang back so suddenly that he burst his waistcoat buttons. His musket went off at the same moment, and Bruin made a spring to hug Tom Turner. The bullet found a billet in the beast’s neck, but didn’t stop his way, and next moment the bear and Tom both were tumbling down, down, down over a precipice. The bear fell on the top of a rock, and was killed. Tom alighted on the top of a juniper tree, and wasn’t a bit the worse, for Tom was a tough lad.
“There were three or four bears altogether killed that forenoon, and I daresay a good many more frightened. However, about one o’clock the three friends were seated on the top of a breezy eminence overlooking the bonnie glen, and in sight of their horses, while they enjoyed their lunch or tiffin.
“‘What a lovely day!’ said Tom, as he lay at full length on the greensward. ‘How wildly sublime those hills are! Wooded almost to the summits everyone of them; and look, John, at that river far beneath yonder, like a silver thread winding away through the greenery of the forest. You’re not looking, John.’
“‘I’m looking at something else,’ said my grand-dad.
“Ugh!” cried the Indian chief, springing to his feet, seizing his gun, and pointing with it to a hill-top beyond the ravine.
“There were figures there—dark, creeping figures, no bigger apparently than coyotes.
“They were Indians.”
A Gallop for Life and Freedom.
“They were Indians sure enough, and doubtless only scouts of a bigger party.
“There was no time to lose. Sport and all was forgotten; they must mount their horses, and be off back to the prairie land. There they would be clear, at least, of an ambush, and could trust to the fleetness of their horses.