While thus speculating on the result, a noise reaches the ears of the English youth, as also of others on vidette post, which causes an instant and sudden turning of their eyes in the opposite direction. Many voices, indeed, all loud and all in excited tone. Voices of men, shrieks of women, and cries of terrified children, all coming from one place, their new camp by the spring.
The videttes stay not on their post an instant longer, but forsaking it, rush towards ojo de agua. Sounds inexplicable, mysterious! What can be causing them? The only suggestion attempted is, that the Indians after all may have contrived to ascend the messa by some secret path known only to themselves, and are in the act of attacking from the rear. What other enemy could cause such a scare? Every voice in the miners’ party is seemingly convulsed with affright.
The young Englishman dashes on ahead, tearing through branches, and bounding over trunks of prostrate trees. Vicente, who had brought the watch with him, is close behind, though he has not such stimulus to haste, for amidst the fracas of noises, Henry Tresillian hears a sweet voice calling out his own name in a tone of appeal.
Not till they come to the very edge of the glade do they discover the cause of all these wild demonstrations, though something seen an instant or two earlier leads Vicente to conjecture it. Men, but chiefly boys and girls, standing on the branches of trees high as they can climb, as though there to behold some passing spectacle.
“El orso!—the grizzly!”
“It must be that,” says Vicente, pressing on. And so it proves. As the videttes so mysteriously summoned in see on getting to the nearer end of the glade which surrounds the spring, at its farther one are two gigantic animals, one a quadruped, the other to all appearances a biped. For all, both are four-footed creatures, and the most dangerous to be encountered in all the desert lands of America. So utterly are they regardless of the odds against them that they would advance to the attack of horse or man, even were there twenty of these together, and have been known to come shuffling into a well-appointed camp, and make a grand havoc, ere means may be taken to destroy or eject them.
The Indian tiger or the African lion are not more to be dreaded in their jungles than is the ursus ferox in the districts it specially affects.
Strange that the pair at the inner end of the glade had not yet shown signs of any determination to assail the camp; indeed, they seem to be amusing themselves at the stir their presence has created, or rather as if making amusement for the surprised people. He, upon his hams, for it is the male who has so erected himself, is playing his fore-paws about, as if engaged in an act of prestidigitation; while his mate, at intervals also rearing up, seems to be playing the part of juggler’s assistant, the whole spectacle being comical in the extreme. The tragical part of it had not yet commenced, and for two reasons.
First, that the grizzly bear seldom makes instant attack, appearing to enter on the field of battle more by accident than from any predetermined hostile resolve. Only after shammering about a while, and at intervals uttering a snort till their passions get the better of them, and then woe to man or horse that comes within the hug of their powerful fore-paws! With its enormous curving claws, many inches in length, a grizzly bear has been known to drag the largest ox or horse to the ground, as a terrier would a rabbit.
Henry Tresillian looks only to the two canvas tents to see the señora inside one, her face visible through the opening, while Gertrude is still without by the side of her own father and his. The young girl appears behaving herself more bravely than any of the older people around. She is inspired with fresh courage at the sight of the English youth bounding towards her, gun in hand.