His thoughts broke short off. Down in the center of the valley, not fifty yards before them where the shadow of the hill plunged all in midnight blackness, something had stirred. After that had come a grunt.
“Like a pig,” Johnny thought. “But of course—”
Again his thoughts broke off. A head had risen above the shadow line, a great grizzly head with a red, lolling tongue. This was no pig.
One instant it was there, the next it was gone. But the boy had seen enough to set his heart racing. Squatting down with one knee on the snow, he swung his bow into place and waited.
He had not long to wait. The creature, a great northern grizzly bear, was moving now. She was coming out of the shadows. Johnny’s breath came hard as he saw the size of her. His heart stopped beating altogether when he realized that she was leading two half grown cubs.
“Bows and arrows,” he thought. Never had they seemed such frail weapons as now, yet he was prepared to do his best.
As these thoughts passed through his mind, the three bears moved out into the field of light.
Johnny felt a light pressure on his arm. He understood. They were to shoot. Once more his heart raced. Yet his hand was steady as he drew his bow. By instinct he seemed to understand that he was to shoot at the larger of the two cubs. The hunchback would aim at the great beast’s heart.
“Here’s hoping!” Johnny’s whole body stiffened. His arrow flew, and with it another.
In an instant there was tumult in the bears’ camp. Having neither seen nor smelled their enemies, both the cubs and the old one blamed his companion for the pain that had leaped upon them from the dark. At once they fell upon one another. Such growling and roaring, such cuffing and scratching Johnny had not known in his life.