The Trail of the Badger
CHAPTER I Dick Stanley
"Look out! Look out! Behind you, man! Behind you! Jump quick, or he'll get you!"
It was a boy, a tall, spare, wiry young fellow of sixteen, who shouted this warning, his voice, in its frantic urgency, rising almost to a shriek at the end; and it was another boy, also tall, spare and wiry, to whom the warning was shouted. The latter turned to look behind him, and for one brief instant his whole body stiffened with fear—his very hair stood on end. Nor is this a mere figure of speech: the boy's hair did actually stand on end: he could feel it "creep" against the crown of his hat. I know—for I was the boy!
That I had good reason to be "scared stiff" I think any other boy will admit, for, not thirty feet below me, coming quickly and silently up the rocks, his little gleaming eyes fixed intently upon me, was a grim old cinnamon bear, an animal which, though less dangerous than his big cousin, the grizzly, is quite dangerous enough when he is thoroughly in earnest.
But for my companion's warning shout the bear would surely have caught me, and my story would have come to an end at the very beginning of the first chapter.
It was certainly an awkward situation, about as awkward, I should think, as any boy ever got himself into; and how I, Frank Preston, lately a schoolboy in St. Louis, happened to find myself on a spur of Mescalero Mountain, in Colorado, with a cinnamon bear charging up the rocks within a few feet of me, needs a word of explanation.
I will therefore go back a few steps in order to give myself space for a preliminary run before jumping head-first into my story, and will tell not only how I came to be there, but will relate also the curious incident which first brought me into contact with my future friend, Dick Stanley; an incident which, while it served as an introduction, at the same time gave me some idea of the resourcefulness and promptness of action with which his very peculiar training had endowed him.
It was in the last week of October, 1877, that I was seated one evening in my room in St. Louis, very busy preparing my studies for next day, when the door opened suddenly and in walked my Uncle Tom.
When, at the age of seven, I had been left an orphan, Uncle Tom, my mother's brother, though himself a bachelor, had taken charge of me, and with him I had lived ever since. He and I, I am glad to say, were the best of friends—regular chums—for, though twenty years my senior, he seemed in some respects to be as young as myself, and our relations were more like those of elder and younger brother than of uncle and nephew.