"He can climb, all right," rejoined Pete, "but a grizzly is the most cautious brute there is. He's quite smart enough to see that this tree overhangs a steep slope that ends in a precipice, and he knows, too, that if too much weight is put on it we'll all go down together. Maybe he won't try to dislodge us. That's our only hope."
"But even if he doesn't climb it he's liable to sit below till we come down from hunger or drop from fatigue."
"Well, that's a chance we've got to take," grunted Pete grimly.
The grizzly seemed in no particular hurry to proceed. Having crossed the bridge he leisurely sniffed about, only from time to time glancing up out of his little red eyes at the two figures in the flimsy fir tree.
All this time Maud had been plunging about like a wild thing, but her rope held tight and she could not escape.
"Poor critter," said Pete, as he watched her. "If we'd only taken her warning we might have been out of here by now."
"If we ever get out of this, I'll believe anything a mule tells me," chimed in Jack miserably.
The grizzly apparently made up his mind suddenly that it was time that all delays were over. With the peculiar lumbering gait of these huge, but active, creatures, he rapidly made his way to the foot of the little fir and placed his fore paws on it. As Jack gazed downward at the huge paws, armed with enormous claws, each as big and sharp as a chilled steel chisel, he could not restrain a cry.
"Steady, kid, steady," groaned Pete. "Oh, if only I had a rifle for you, me haughty beauty, wouldn't I drill a nice hole in you."
He shook his fist at the bear, which growled savagely back. But having tested the tree, the bear, as Pete had expected, declined to risk his weight on it. Instead he shook it a little in a vain attempt to dislodge the two clinging occupants. Both man and boy hung on with grim desperation, while a dreadful fear that the roots might give way gnawed at the heart of each.