Faster than they ever before had climbed a tree, Dick and Sandy shinned up one in the dark. The bear charged beneath them in the underbrush. The huge beast wheeled on finding his prey had taken to the trees and circled the trunk which supported Dick and Sandy. Toma’s calm voice came through the gloom from a near-by tree:
“Him grizzly all right,” Toma told them. “You stay in tree. I get down to rifle pretty quick.”
“You surely must have wounded the bear,” Dick whispered to Sandy. “I’ve heard they won’t attack unless they’re wounded.”
“I don’t know what I did,” Sandy came back breathlessly. “I just blazed away and ran. Believe me, I don’t want to go down there again while that monster is wandering around looking for me. He’d chew us up in about two bites and a half.”
Dick knew that Sandy’s caution bump was working again, and he smiled in the dark. He did not intend to let Toma go down after the bear alone. Yet he believed the young Indian would protest if he revealed his intentions.
“Got your rifle?” Dick called to Toma, not intimating his resolution.
“I got gun,” Toma called back.
“I wish I’d thought to bring mine along,” Dick muttered, “but then it takes an Indian to shin up a tree with a heavy rifle in his hand I suppose. Anyway I have my knife.”
“Don’t go down, Dick,” whispered Sandy, as the bear crashed about in the brush below them.
“Nonsense, Sandy, I’ve got as much chance as Toma. We can’t let that bear wreck our camp. That’s what he’s up to.”