“Then I’ll go down too,” Sandy stubbornly decided.
They could not hear Toma’s movements with the bear making so much noise, but Dick suspected the guide already had slipped down from his tree and was stalking the wounded grizzly, perhaps close enough to get in a fatal shot.
Presently, they could hear the bear make off into the gloom toward the campfire. When Dick and Sandy dropped down out of the tree, the bear seemed to be on the other side of the campfire, clawing and mouthing over their dunnage.
“You better stay up in the tree,” Dick said.
“Not on your tintype,” Sandy snapped. “If you go, I go.”
“Well, then, we’ve got to get our guns,” said Dick. “Mine’s right where I got out of my blankets.”
“Seems to me I dropped mine just before I started climbing the tree,” Sandy was feeling around in the dark. “Yes, here it is,” was his triumphant call.
Toma seemingly had vanished. Since his last words, they had heard nothing more from him. Dick judged the guide was stalking the bear from some other direction. At any moment he expected to hear the report of the Indian’s rifle, and see the flash of it in the gloom.
Sandy alone armed, save for Dick’s hunting knife, the boys began a stealthy advance toward the camp where they could hear the bear slashing and groveling about, evidently in some pain, for they were sure now that Sandy’s shot had taken effect.
The coals of the campfire shed a faint glow. As the boys drew nearer, on hands and knees, they could see the bulk of the grizzly outlined. He seemed a mammoth of his kind, and indeed was a fearful beast to meet in the forest.