“A bear!” yelled Joe in answer, his rifle and he breaking silence together.
Three times the Winchester sharply cracked.
Then with a mad “Halloo!” the guide seized a flaming stick from the fire, and, swinging it above his head, started after the big black animal of which Neal had caught a glimpse before. He now saw it plainly as, already fifty yards ahead, it made off at a plunging gallop across the moonlit brûlée.
Young Farrar had been the champion runner of his school, and he blessed his trained legs for giving him a prominent part in the wild chase that followed. Still imitating the woodsman, he pulled another half-lighted stick from the camp-fire, and waved it in a frenzy of excitement, while he ran like a buck at Joe’s side.
“Tumble out! Tumble out, boys! A bear! A bear!” now rang from one tent to another.
In two minutes every camper, in his stocking feet, just as he had risen from his bed, was tearing across the brûlée in the wake of Bruin, yelling, leaping, and swinging smouldering firebrands.
It was a scene and a chase such as the boys, in their most far-fetched dreams, had never pictured,—the white moonlight glimmering on the black stumps and tottering trunks of the ruined tract, the hunted bear plunging off among them, frightened by the shouting and the lights, the heavy, lumbering gallop enabling it at first to distance its pursuers.
Owing to their fleetness and the odds they had at the start, the guide and Neal kept far ahead of their comrades. The noise which Bruin made as he lumbered over the pygmy growth, and the charred, rotting timber that littered the ground beneath it, were quiet enough to guide Joe unerringly in the bear’s wake, even when that bulky shape was not distinguishable.
“What’s this?” screeched the woodsman suddenly, as he stumbled upon something at his feet. “By gracious! it’s our keg of m’lasses. He made off with that, and has dropped it out o’ sheer fright, or because he’s weakening. I know I hit him twice when I fired; but he’s not hurt too badly to run, or to fight like a fiend if we come to close quarters. Like as not ’twill be a narrow squeak with us if we tackle him. If you’re scared a little bit, Neal, let up, an’ I’ll finish him alone.”
“Scared!” Neal flung the word back with scorn, as if he was returning a blow. For the life of him he could not bring out another syllable, going at a faster rate than ever he had done in the most stubbornly contested handicap. The strong-winded guide rapped out his sentences as he ran, apparently without waste of breath.