In thus turning the bear's attention from the old squaw to himself he was well aware that he had risked his own life. Yet he felt he could not have done otherwise, since she had willingly taken the same risk in coming to set him free, instead of escaping with the other squaws while there was yet time.
Seeing itself balked of one prey, the bear now concentrated his rage upon the other. He made a furious rush.
If Dusty Star had been a fraction of a second too late, the delay would have cost him his life; but even as the furry Terror hurled itself upon him, he made one of his swift wolf-leaps to the other side of a pile of skins. The grizzly turned like a flash. It was amazing that so huge a body could move with such terrible ease and quickness. But quick though the bear was, the boy was quicker. He knew that death was hard upon him. A false, or undecided movement, and nothing could save him from those murderous claws. All the muscles of his lithe body were contracted in preparation for the final rush for life. Before the grizzly could cut him off, Dusty Star seemed not so much to run, as to shoot himself out from the lodge.
The big paw missed its mark by a hair's breath—no more. Only one of the frightful hooked claws touched with its tip the spot where Dusty Star's buckskin shirt bulged slightly from his back. It rent it as clean as the slash of a tomahawk, but failed to reach the skin. Dusty Star felt the slash, and bounded for his life. He could see Kitsomax's stooping form already half-way towards the forest.
If he had made a straight run now, it was probable that the bear would have caught him, owing to the extraordinary speed with which a bear can move over the ground, but as Dusty Star took a zig-zag course all across the camp, doubling right and left as he darted round the tepees, the grizzly lost ground.
From the last tepee to the edge of the forest was less than a dozen yards. Dusty Star took them at a wild run, hearing the snarling growl of the grizzly as it came wheeling furiously round the last tepee. He swung himself desperately into the nearest tree. With a roar of disappointed rage, the grizzly flung himself against it, tearing savagely at the bark, and stripping it into splinters. Then, clasping the trunk with his mighty fore-arms, he hugged it with all his might, wrenching it this way and that in an attempt to break it down.
Dusty Star, on his perch, felt the whole tree shiver beneath him. A tree of smaller growth must have given way at last to the enormous strain, whereas a sapling would have yielded like matchwood.
As Dusty Star was aware, a full-grown grizzly rarely climbs. Still, in the present enraged condition of the brute's feelings, there was no telling what he might not attempt to do. So, when he saw that the bear, finding he could not break the tree down by main force, was beginning to climb it, he was more alarmed than surprised. Yet even then, as he felt the tree vibrate to the movement of the great body as it came slowly up, he kept his presence of mind. He threw a quick look round him that took in all the details at a glance. In an instant he knew what he must do. When the bear was a third of the way up the trunk, Dusty Star climbed out along a branch and dropped quickly to the ground. By the time the grizzly had laboriously climbed down backwards, Dusty Star was out of sight among the trees.
When the Indians returned that evening, they found the camp a total wreck; for the bear, disappointed in his attempt to seize Dusty Star, had turned back to vent his rage upon the tepees. Here, one was completely torn down; there, another showed wide rents between its lodge-poles. And where one had apparently escaped, it was found, when entered, to have its contents torn and thrown about in all directions.
Of Dusty Star himself, they could not see a sign. And the only person who could have thrown a light upon his disappearance, took the wise course of holding her tongue. Even the thong which had bound him had likewise disappeared. For when the terrified squaws had crept back one by one to the ruined camp, Kitsomax had taken the precaution to bury it under a bush.