“Sure. But he'd need wings to get near that hound now. Pedro couldn't have gone across there with him... just listen.”
The wild note of the hound manifestly stirred Bo to irrepressible action. Snatching up Dale's lighter rifle, she shoved it into her saddle-sheath, and, leaping on the mustang, she ran him over brush and brook, straight down the park toward the place Pedro was climbing. For an instant Helen stood amazed beyond speech. When Bo sailed over a big log, like a steeple-chaser, then Helen answered to further unconsidered impulse by frantically getting her saddle fastened. Without coat or hat she mounted. The nervous horse bolted almost before she got into the saddle. A strange, trenchant trembling coursed through all her veins. She wanted to scream for Bo to wait. Bo was out of sight, but the deep, muddy tracks in wet places and the path through the long grass afforded Helen an easy trail to follow. In fact, her horse needed no guiding. He ran in and out of the straggling spruces along the edge of the park, and suddenly wheeled around a corner of trees to come upon the gray mustang standing still. Bo was looking up and listening.
“There he is!” cried Bo, as the hound bayed ringingly, closer to them this time, and she spurred away.
Helen's horse followed without urging. He was excited. His ears were up. Something was in the wind. Helen had never ridden along this broken end of the park, and Bo was not easy to keep up with. She led across bogs, brooks, swales, rocky little ridges, through stretches of timber and groves of aspen so thick Helen could scarcely squeeze through. Then Bo came out into a large open offshoot of the park, right under the mountain slope, and here she sat, her horse watching and listening. Helen rode up to her, imagining once that she had heard the hound.
“Look! Look!” Bo's scream made her mustang stand almost straight up.
Helen gazed up to see a big brown bear with a frosted coat go lumbering across an opening on the slope.
“It's a grizzly! He'll kill Pedro! Oh, where is Dale!” cried Bo, with intense excitement.
“Bo! That bear is running down! We—we must get—out of his road,” panted Helen, in breathless alarm.
“Dale hasn't had time to be close.... Oh, I wish he'd come! I don't know what to do.”
“Ride back. At least wait for him.”