Seeing this, the bear rose to his feet again, gazed at us for a moment, and then stepped back out of sight.
“Has he gone?” I whispered; but before Joe could answer Big Reuben appeared again, walking down the ledge towards us. Of course we sidled away from him, until the ledge had become so narrow that I could go no farther; and lucky it was for us that the ledge was narrow, for what was standing-room for us was by no means standing-room for the bear: his body was much too thick to allow him to come near us, or even to approach the spot whence we had just retreated.
As it was obvious that the bear could advance no farther, for he was standing on the very edge of the ledge and there was a bulge in the rock before him which would inevitably have pushed him off into the chasm had he attempted to pass it, Joe and I returned to the spring, where we had room to stand or to sit down as we wished.
The enemy watched our approach, with a glint of malice in his little piggy eyes, but when he saw that we intended to come no nearer, he lay down where he was and began unconcernedly licking his paws.
“He thinks he can starve us out,” said Joe; “but if I’m not mistaken we can stand it longer than he can, even if he did eat half a pig last night. And there’s one thing certain, Phil: if we don’t get home to-night, somebody will come to look for us in the morning.”
“Yes,” I assented. “But they’ll get a pretty bad scare at home if we don’t turn up. Is there no way of sending that beast off? If we could only get hold of one of the guns——”
By standing upright we could see my rifle lying on the ground and Joe’s big gun standing with its muzzle pointed skyward, leaning against a boulder. They were only six feet away, but six feet were six feet: we could not reach them without climbing up, and that was out of the question—the bear could get there much more quickly than we could.
“Phil!” exclaimed my companion, suddenly. “Have you got any twine in your pocket?”
“Yes,” I replied, pulling out a long, stout piece of string. “Why?”
“Perhaps we can ‘rope’ my gun. See, its muzzle stands clear. Then we could drag it within reach.”