“What is it?” cried Tom.
“Bears are after him! Turn out!” The Overlanders rushed out. Stacy was bare-headed, having lost his hat, and even the girls in their fright could not but laugh at the ludicrous sight of the fat boy pursued by bears.
“Yell, all of you!” shouted Tom Gray. “It may frighten them off.”
“Run if the beasts get close!” cried Hippy, snatching up a blanket and starting towards Stacy.
Tom Gray, instantly divining his companion’s purpose, also grabbed a blanket and sprinted after Hippy. Despite the noise that the Overlanders were making, the bears came right on.
Hippy, still in the lead, made ready his blanket, as the foremost bear now headed directly for him. In the meantime Stacy passed the two men on his way to camp, yelling with all his might, and fairly dove into his tent.
As the foremost bear charged Lieutenant Wingate he deftly threw his blanket over the animal’s head and side-stepped. About this time Tom Gray performed a similar service for the second bear.
“Run for it!” yelled Hippy, and the two Overland men ran for camp.
The bears, however, did not follow but were trying to extricate themselves from the tangle into which they had gotten themselves in the blankets. When they had finally freed themselves there was little left of the Overland blankets. The trick, however, had served its purpose. The animals were now thoroughly frightened, and, having vented their rage on the blankets, reared and looked sharply about them. Not a human being was in sight at that moment, the Overlanders, at Tom’s suggestion, having ducked in among the trees. Seeing no one, the bears, uttering angry growls, and apparently satisfied that they had put their enemies out of business, ambled away and were seen no more.
It was Lieutenant Wingate who, shortly afterwards, hauled Chunky from his tent feet first.