He could see it quite plainly as it lumbered along through the woods, crying pitifully. Its long coat, greasy and shaggy, burned like a torch.
“Get along, Firewater, old boy,” breathed Jack, bending over his animal’s neck to avoid being brushed off by the low-hanging branches, for, after a short distance, the tangle on the hillside at the canyon’s bottom grew thick and dense.
But Firewater, alarmed and startled at the spectacle of the flaming beast rushing along through the dark woods in front, balked and jumped about and misbehaved in a manner very foreign to him when he had his young master on his back.
But Jack never made the mistake of allowing a pony or horse to think it could get the upper hand of him, and, consequently, Firewater soon quieted down and realized that there was no help for it but to go whither he was directed.
At length Jack arrived within pistol shot of the frenzied bear. Aiming as carefully as he could for a death shot, he pressed the trigger and the wretched animal,—the victim of its own curiosity,—plunged over and lay still.
“Poor creature,” quoth Jack to himself, “you are not the first to pay the toll of too much inquisitiveness. Gee whiz!” he broke off the next instant with one of his hearty, wholesome laughs, “I’m getting to be as much of a moralist as the professor.”
Having ascertained that the bear was quite dead and out of its suffering, the Border Boy remounted his pony and pressed back toward camp. But as he neared it, it was borne in upon him that the adventures of the night were by no means at an end, for before he reached the others, and while a thick screen of brush still lay between him and the glow of the newly made camp fire, a sudden volley of shots and the clattering of many horses’ hoofs broke the stillness.
A touch of the heel was enough to send Firewater bounding forward. The next instant the brush had been cleared, and a strange spectacle met Jack Merrill’s eyes. His companions, their weapons in hand, stood about the fire staring here and there into the darkness. A puzzled expression was on all their faces, and particularly was this true of the professor, who was scrutinizing, through his immense horn spectacles, a scrap of paper which he held in his hand. He was stooping low by the firelight the better to examine it.
“Oh, here you are,” cried Ralph, as the returned young adventurer came forward into the glow.
“Yes, here I am,” cried Jack, throwing himself from Firewater’s back. “I despatched that bear, too, but what on earth has been happening here?”