“Maybe you can,” said Dumplin’. “I couldn’t go anywhere now, ’cept on a stretcher.”
“We’ll leave you here then—the air’s fine,” said Bennie.
The baying didn’t stop in one place, however, for ten or fifteen minutes. It seemed to be moving up and down the mountain. Finally, however, it came from a single direction, seemingly only a quarter of a mile to the right, and down the mountain a bit, and the boys thought they detected a change in the sound. They also could now hear a second dog.
“I bet old Ben has treed him!” Bennie cried, “and one of the other pups has caught up! Come on, let’s go see!”
“Just us, a couple of dogs, and no gun, against a bear? No, thank you!” exclaimed Dumplin’.
“Well, I don’t live in Oregon,” Bennie replied, “but I know that when a bear is treed by a dog, he stays up the tree. Anyhow, I’m going to take a chance. You can stay here alone, if you want to. I’m going to see that old bear. That’s what we came here for.”
He got up and untethered his horse, climbing stiffly and with a groan into the saddle. Spider followed him.
“Oh, well, if you go, I’m going—if I can ever get aboard that beast,” said Dumplin’. “Gee, he’s about a thousand feet high!”
Bennie led the way toward the sound of the barking, which was still in one place, but not so loud now, and very hoarse. They had three ravines to cross, but in their excitement they didn’t think about the fresh tears and scratches. In fifteen minutes they came very near the sound of the barking. A moment later they broke up out of a lodge-pole thicket to find old Ben running ’round and ’round the trunk of a huge yellow pine, his bark almost gone, like the voice of a man who has been making too many speeches, nothing much left but a hoarse whisper, while Cap was standing with his front paws up the trunk as high as he could reach.
The boys looked up the tree and gave a wild yell, while old Ben, seeing them there, sprang at the tree with renewed life, as if he were trying to climb it, too, to show them he really wasn’t winded after all. Far up, sixty or seventy-five feet from the ground, in the crotch of the first big limb, lay a black bear. His forepaws were hugging the limb, his head was poked over, his tongue kept hanging out, and they could see his little eyes looking at them. Since they had no gun, he was perfectly safe as long as he cared to sit there, and he appeared to know it.