"Dead as a door-nail," he replied, calmly. "Look."
I glanced over my shoulder down the slope. There, on his back among the rocks, lay the cinnamon, his great arms spread out and his head hanging over, motionless. As the snarling beast had slid past him, not ten feet away, Dick, with his Winchester repeater, had shot him once through the heart and once in the base of the skull, so that the bear was stone dead ere he fell from the little two-foot ice-cliff at the bottom of the slope.
As for myself, I had had such a scare and was so completely exhausted by my vehement struggles during the past couple of minutes, that for a quarter of an hour I lay on the rocks panting and gasping ere I could get my lungs and my muscles back into working order again.
As soon as I could do so, however, I sat up, and holding out my hand to my companion, I said:
"Thanks, old chap. I'm mighty glad you were on hand, or, I'm afraid, it would have been all up with me."
"It was a pretty close shave," replied Dick; "rather too close for comfort. He meant mischief, sure enough. Well, he's out of mischief now, all right. Let's go down and look at him."
"I suppose," said I, "it was the bear that the sheep were looking down at when they stood up there on the ledge all in a row."
"Yes, that was it. If I'd known it was a bear they were staring at I'd have left them alone. A mountain-lion I'm not afraid of: he'll run ninety-nine times out of a hundred. But a cinnamon bear is quite another thing: the less you have to do with them, the better."
"Well, as far as I'm concerned," said I, "the less I have to do with them, the better it will suit me. If this fellow is a sample of his tribe I'm very willing to forego their further acquaintance: my first interview came too unpleasantly near to being my last. Come on; let's go down."