The boy hung on to him or perhaps Wash would still be running, he was so scared. Nor were the other members of the party much less startled.
But Andy Sudds was as steady as a rock. His first ball had hit the huge beast in the breast, but the latter had plunged forward after the escaping darkey as the ball struck him. Therefore the wound was too high up to do serious damage.
A grizzly, or Kodiak, bear has never yet been settled by a single shot—unless the bullet entering the beast's carcass was explosive. With a mighty roar the bear plunged forward, right through the fire, scattering it far and wide and aiming directly for the place from which the rifle ball had come. It had stung him, and he was after the old hunter on the instant.
He half fell over the coop which contained the Shanghai rooster. Irritable as he could be, the bear delayed long enough to strike at this coop. He smashed one end of it flat, but the Shanghai miraculously escaped injury.
The bird had undoubtedly been disturbed and frightened by the secret approach of Bruin; but once free, the feathered creature felt his dignity disturbed, and finding himself free of the coop, he flew with a loud squawk at the charging bear.
Andy had pumped two more bullets after his first one. Both had found their billet in the body of the bear; but neither had struck a vital spot. The scattering fire, as the beast plowed through the embers, drove the rest of the party out of range in a hurry. Jack dragged Wash to one side; but the darkey yelled:
"Gollyation! I wanter save Buttsy! Oh, lawsy-massy! Dat Shanghai suahly is a reckless bird!"
In the flaring light of the flames the rooster was seen to pounce upon the shoulders of the huge bear as the latter came down to "all-fours" and dived at the old hunter. Andy sprang back, collided with a tree-trunk, and went head over heels. In an instant the bear would have been upon him and one stroke of his sabre-like claws would have finished Andy Sudds.
But the rooster certainly did delay the bear's charge. The brute struck at his feathered tormentor with first one fore paw, and then the other. He failed to dislodge his enemy by such means.
And then a big ember behind him snapped and a part of the flaming branch fell upon the ground just where Bruin put his hind paw upon it. Plowing through the blaze in a hurry was one thing—this was an entirely different proposition.