“I know you don’t believe what I say, Chief,” complained the other, “but I’m going to raise my hand, and on the honor of a scout say once more that I did really and truly see a bear!”
“Well, let it go at that,” said Hugh. “We’ll believe that you thought you saw some sort of thing that looked like a bear. I’ve known fellows who saw ghosts and believed it as much as they could anything, till it was proven that the moving white object was a pillow-slip left out on the clothes line, floating up and down in the soft night air. Sometimes in the dim woods a stump can look mighty like a big black bear, I’m told.”
“P’raps that’s all true enough, Hugh,” persisted the other, “but when you see it rear up on its hind legs, and start at you—that looks different, don’t it?” demanded the other.
“Oh! then it moved, did it? actually got up on its hind legs and wanted to give you the high sign?” jeered Arthur still unconvinced. “Well, that’s what you get for belonging to the Wolf Patrol. This wonderful bear thought you might be his own cousin. He meant to shake hands with you, Billy.”
Billy shrugged his broad shoulders. Though still looking a little anxious, he was no longer white in the face. This scepticism on the part of Arthur had the good effect of arousing what was combative in his jolly nature, and putting fresh courage in his boyish heart.
“Well,” he went on to say resolutely, “I can see that you’ll never be satisfied till you meet up with that bear for yourself, Arthur. So s’pose you hike out. We’ll follow after you. I dare you to, get that?”
No boy can easily stand being put on his mettle. With quaking heart many a lad has started into a country churchyard on a dark night or in some other such reckless venture just because his mates have given him the “dare.”
Arthur gave a quick look up the trail. So far as he could see, there did not appear to be anything amiss in that direction. Surely if a hungry bear did lurk near by he would have been apt to show himself ere this.
So Arthur, feeling that he had gone too far now to show the white feather, threw out his chest, and stepped ahead of the other two.
“All right, you watch me show you up for the biggest fakir going, Billy,” he remarked with all the firmness he could command. “I’ve passed up and down along the same trail dozens of times, and if there’d been such a thing as a bear around—well, wouldn’t I be apt to know it? Guess I would. Now, I’ve seen a fox once, a little red fox; likewise a skunk that I gave a wide berth to. There was a rabbit that used to jump out of the bushes every single day, sometimes giving me a start, if I happened to be thinking hard and forgot about it. Wonder whether anybody could make out one of those to be a bear!”