On beholding the warrior, Babs’s first impulse was to scream in terror; her next—and this she carried out—was to roll on her back, her two legs pointing skywards, and scream with laughter.
“Oh,” she cried delightedly, “’oo is such a boo’ful wallio! (warrior); be twick and tell somefing.”
For the time being Babs was only the audience. When she became an actor in this great forest drama she would have to behave differently.
And now the red chief went prowling around, and presently out from a bush darted a grizzly bear.
The bear was Bob.
Chee-tow uttered his wildest war-cry, and rushed onwards to the charge.
The grizzly held his ground and scorned to fly.
“Then began the deadly conflict,
Hand to hand among the mountains;
From his eerie screamed the eagle (the crane)
...the great war-eagle,
Sat upon the crags around them,
Wheeling, flapped his wings above them.
* * * * *.
“Till the earth shook with the tumult
And confusion of the battle.
And the air was full of shoutings,
And the thunder of the mountains
Starting, answered ‘Baim-wa-wa.’”
This fierce fight with the terrible grizzly was so realistic that the audience sat silent and enthralled, with its thumb in its mouth.
But it ended at last in the victory of the red chief. The bear lay dead, and the first Act came to a close.