Then Felix laughed a little, as though he might be convinced.
"I guess you're right, Tom," he observed. "It just occurred to me that when the wounded buck had me held up in the tree a prisoner, I was only too glad to fish up my Marlin, and give him his dose. Of course I didn't climb that tree in the beginning; he tossed me up there."
"Well, I don't suppose you could induce the grizzly to try that same thing; but if he did, you'd think it all right then to plug him, would you? I rather guess it don't amount to much difference after all, Felix, whether you climb first, or get pushed up a tree. The whole fact of the matter is, that a man isn't in the same class as a big buck or a wounded grizzly, when it comes to muscle; and he's just got to fall back on guns, and trees, and such, to even things up."
"Consider it settled then, Tom; I'll climb," concluded the Eastern boy; and with this his chum seemed content.
They were getting deeper into the mountains all the while, and Felix could even see where they had started to climb when heading upwards on that other occasion at the time they went after bighorns.
And Tom led the way over some of the same ground. It was more familiar to them now, and they did not have the same difficulty as before. Indeed, Felix remembered in many instances just where to place his foot; or to reach up and seize on a projecting knob in order to pull himself upward.
He began to look curiously ahead, wondering just where it could be that Tom had sighted the head of the grizzly thrust out, as the animal surveyed the descending hunters, who were bearing fresh meat. Indeed, he really wondered why Bruin had not seen fit to follow after the scent, and make them drop their packs, or else fight for the spoils on the spot. Tom, upon being asked declared that ordinarily such might have been the programme of a grizzly, that fears nothing under the sun, in either the human or the animal kingdom; but that possibly His Majesty, as he called the beast, may have recently dined; and when one has no appetite, it seems the part of folly to go to any extraordinary exertion to secure food.
"But he may be on edge today, just the same," he added, after giving this information in answer to the question of his cousin.
"I hope so," replied Felix. "If I just do have to climb a tree, and ask a bear to step up and be shot, I want to see him at his worst. That's the only thing to give me an easy conscience."
Tom only smiled.