"Where are the bears?" inquired Kidd, anxiously.
"I drove them into a crack that probably leads to their lair. They shed my shot and my bullet off like rain from a roof; but we may be more lucky in another attack. Shall we have a turn at them?"
"Thank you very much, but I have had all I want of such diversion. Why, when they reared, it was like looking up the side of a church! I am sure their teeth were as long as a hunting knife. Who and what are you, stranger?"
"A hunter—an Englishman wintering in Canada and hereabouts—came out to this New World to see some sport."
"Alone!" cried Kidd, in the tone of one addressing a madman. "Stop, though, I have heard—though I never believed it—that solitary hunters of your nationality do come here with the notion that buffalo are merely wild bullocks, the puma a large edition of the domestic cat, and grizzly himself, a rough badger puffed into balloon size by pinyon fruit. I say, friend," he went on, nervously glancing about, "kindly lend me your arm as far as my encampment. I am in force here, and promise you good entertainment. Not a man of my band but will welcome the preserver of their leader. I owe my life to you doubly; you must not go away till I shall have acquitted myself of the debt."
"Nonsense! It's all in the day's sport. You would do as much for me, if it had been the other way about."
"I doubt it—I draw the line at grizzly. But you know that such a service obliges the doer as much as the receiver. Come along."
"I tell you, I am used to camp down anywhere I feel sleepy. I have no fear of rheumatism," returned the young man, gaily.
"I beg you to accompany me to my camp, for I am quite lame, and spend at least a night there."
"Do you insist upon that?" inquired Dearborn, with a singular expression.