Together the men immediately rushed to the spot where Alex lay hidden. They rustled through the bushes without any attempt at concealment, scrambling up the acclivity with the use of both hands and feet.
As they advanced another rustling came from the left, and Alex saw Teddy on the way back to his side. The moon, creeping farther to the south, found an opening in the dense foliage above the ledge, and threw a long shaft of light upon the exact spot where Alex lay, revolver in hand, waiting for the expected attack.
He moved out of this natural limelight hastily, but as he did so another figure entered it. Advancing swiftly, the men who had discovered the location of the boy, saw him disappear and saw the new figure which came upon the scene. They stopped instantly.
To their excited imaginations Teddy, standing somewhat above their heads, seemed to be at least nine feet high! Evidently trying to propitiate Alex for running away from him, the cub set about practicing all the stunts the boys had been teaching him for months.
Standing upon his hind legs, he extended his paws in a boxing attitude and pranced about, as he had been taught to do, in all the attitudes of the prize ring. The hair on his neck and back seemed to bristle with anger. His little round eyes, bright in the moonlight, twinkled viciously!
The men who were watching this trained exhibition, held their breaths in terror. They expected to be attacked by the animal immediately. Directly, they began backing slowly away. Then Teddy broke into his pet amusement, a whirling half-dance and they turned and ran, stumbling down the declivity, brushing through the briars and clinging vines of the thicket, and finally disappearing in the shadows farther upstream!
It did not take Alex long to find his way to the cub.
“You certainly are enough to scare the life out of a stranger,” he said, addressing the bear. “If you don’t mind, now, we’ll go back to the boat. We’ve got news for the boys, at any rate.”
But Teddy was not inclined to go back to the close cabin. He wanted a longer run in the woods. Before Alex could seize the collar which had been placed about his neck, he was away again. Alex pursued him for some distance, and then turned back toward the boat.
When he reached the shore and called softly to Case to row the boat over to him, there was no answer from the craft, as the rush of the river drowned his voice, but a most unexpected one came from the shore back of him. He turned quickly to see the barrel of a gun shining in the moonlight. He reached for his own weapon, but a hand caught his wrist and held it, as if in a grasp of iron.