CHAPTER XVIII.

A MIGHTY NIMROD.

“Again! give him another shot!”

Giraffe heard this shouted close to his ear, and mechanically working the pump action of the heavy repeating rifle which his father had carried for quite some years on his hunting trips up in the Adirondacks, he again fired.

“Once more, quick! you’ve got him going; but he’s getting up again!” cried Allan, and so Giraffe did as he was told.

Then he did not see the black hairy mass move any more, though he could hardly believe that he had done what he had expressed such a great ambition to accomplish—shoot a real black bear in his native wilds.

“Good! you’ve finished him, Giraffe!” exclaimed Allan, reaching for the quivering hand of his chum, which he squeezed most heartily. “I’m ever so glad I didn’t have to butt in, and spoil it all. That’s your game for keeps, Giraffe. You’ve got to cut a notch in the stock of your gun after this, because you’re no longer a greenhorn. Come along, and let’s see what he looks like.”

The bear was undoubtedly dead. That last bullet had evidently finished him, although very likely he would never have left that spot after receiving the first and second shots.

“Whew! but ain’t he a buster, though?” ejaculated the delighted hunter, as he cautiously felt of one of the forepaws of the animal.

“We ought to get him out of this before morning,” said Allan; “because the bees will be apt to make it good and warm for us, if we poke in here by daylight. Let’s all get hold, and see if we can’t budge the old critter.”

They found it all they were able to do, to move the bear a few inches at a time; but once clear of the branches of the trees, the task proved easier. By throwing all their weight into each pull, as Jim sang out: “yo heave-o!” they finally managed to get the prize where they wanted him.

“How about leaving him here through the night, Jim?” asked Allan.

“I’d say as how it war safe, if it hadn’t be’n fur thet howl we heard last night,” replied the guide. “If so be wolves is aroun’, they’d clean up this carcase right smart between now an’ daylight.”

“Oh! but I want that hide the worst kind,” declared Giraffe. “Why, whoever’d believe me, if I couldn’t show the skin of the bear I shot?”

Jim took out his knife, and felt the edge.

“Somebody make a fire, so I kin see, and we’ll fix things afore a hour goes past,” he said, simply.

“Let me do it, Allan; you know nobody knows how to build fires as well as I do!” Giraffe exclaimed, laying his gun aside.

He was as good as his word, and had a splendid fire working inside of a very few minutes. The Maine guide was already busily engaged, and Giraffe watched him taking the bear’s hide off with more than common interest; for was it not _his_ bear, and did he not have the right to feel proud? Why, if he had shot poorly, the big beast, rendered savage through pain, might have charged the party; and then there would have been plenty of excitement. Even Allan might have missed, since he could hardly manage to see while trying to hold the torch, and his rifle at the same time; and there would be no telling what must have happened.

After Jim had very deftly taken the hide off, he started in to carve up some of the carcase, taking the choicest portions; for they could only carry a certain amount with them, and the wolves or foxes were quite welcome to the balance.

Indeed, from the grin on Jim’s face, as he used his knife, Allan fancied that the bear was bound to prove about as tough as the moose. But then, hungry boys can masticate what would prove a difficult task to one whose teeth were less sharp; and besides, as that was Giraffe’s bear; of course it would taste especially fine to him.

“Where’d I hit him, Jim?” Giraffe asked, after a time.

“One shot took him on the shoulder,” said Allan, before the guide could reply. “I think that must have been your first. It kind of knocked him over. Then, as he was getting up again, you gave him a second clean through the heart. He kicked after that, but could never have done you any hurt. That was a dandy shot, fired at the time he was moving, too. The last one came in his side, and didn’t amount to so much. But taken in all, you did finely, Giraffe. It speaks well for your nerve.”

“Huh!” grunted the other, who was plainly pleased by Allan’s words nevertheless; “they always did own I had plenty of nerve, you know. Eli Bangs said I had, when I stepped up and took his best girl away from him at that school dance we held out in Epply’s big barn last winter.”

“Got enough, Jim?” asked Allan, as the guide wiped his knife, and put it back in the leather sheath at his belt.

“All we kin kerry,” replied the other, “an’ p’raps twice as much as we’ll eat, I reckons. If so be them wolves is still around, let ’em come ter the feast. I’d like ter git a crack at one of the critters, myself. A wolf I never yet shot, ’cause you see, they be’n so skeerce ever sence I got to totin’ a gun.”

“Well, we might as well head back to the cabin,” Allan remarked. “I see you’ve made that up in two packs, Jim—the hide in one, and the meat in the other?”

“Yep, I thort as how _he’d_ like to kerry the skin, ’cause it’s his’n; I’ll tackle the bundle o’ bear meat,” and the guide slung the heavy load up across his back with the air of one accustomed to making trips across many a _carry_, toting boats, duffle and bedding, as well as tents.

“All right, that leaves the three guns to me; and if either of you get tired, why, just call on me to take a turn. You’ll find me willing,” said Allan.

But that did not happen. Jim was tough, and accustomed to doing all sorts of burden bearing in his work as a guide, summer and winter, year in and year out. And as for Giraffe, catch him asking anybody else to lug _his_ bearskin along, so long as he was able to put one foot before the other.

He may have grunted from time to time; but when Allan asked if he wanted any assistance Giraffe indignantly denied being weary. And so he carried that heavy green hide all the way to camp.

When they arrived at the cabin they could see by the light through the window that those within still kept the fire going, evidently anticipating the arrival of the bear hunting expedition. They jumped up as the three new arrivals entered, and seeing their packs, with the long black hair of the pelt showing plainly, Step Hen and Bumpus were especially vociferous in their congratulations.

Allan noticed one thing as soon as he had taken his first peep into the cabin. This was that Thad, Davy and Eli had not come back as yet. But he saw no reason to be worried. Thad had taken the pains to notify them that possibly he and his companions might be away longer than a single day; and if they failed to show up after night set in, perhaps they would stay out a second day.

“That settles one thing, anyway,” remarked Bumpus. “We ain’t going to starve, as long as we have such mighty hunters as Thad and Giraffe along with us; even if the meat is tough.”

“It settles a number of things,” remarked Giraffe, fastening his “eagle eye,” as Bumpus liked to term those orbs of the tall scout, severely on Step Hen.

“Oh! I know what you’re talkin’ of now,” declared the other, quickly. “It’s all about that rifle of your dad’s, an’ how it c’n shoot. Now, I never said that it couldn’t do the trick, all right. Goodness knows it’s heavy enough for anything. It was you always pokin’ fun at my little thirty-thirty, and callin’ it a popgun, a squirtgun, and all such things. But I take notice, with all that’s said, it took just three bullets for you to kill that poor bear, that was nearly ready to turn up his toes, an’ die from old age; when Thad, he just fired once, and gave a bull moose in a fighting frame, his walking papers. And think how much easier to tote a light gun like mine twenty miles a day. Ask Jim here, and he’ll tell you he means to get one like mine the next time he finds thirty dollars in the road.”

“I suppose that bear is tough, but don’t you say a thing about him being so old he would have soon kicked the bucket You know better than that, Step Hen. Don’t all of us believe that this is the same bear we chased out’n the cabin here, only last night; and say, what did he do to you and Bumpus? Seems to me you wanted us all to know that you’d been thrown ten or twenty feet outside the door, when that poor weakly old sinner as you call him, just breezed past you. Now, that will be quite enough from you, Step Hen. The tougher he was, the more glory for the feller that shot him.”

After this broadside from Giraffe the other scout relapsed into silence; indeed, he could find nothing to say.

“It’s gettin’ pretty late, seems to me,” Bumpus remarked, with a yawn.

“Yes, it is, for kids,” added Giraffe, a little contemptuously; for somehow Step Hen had aroused his fighting blood and he seemed to have a chip on his shoulder, daring any one to knock it off.

“But what’s the use waitin’ up to see if Thad gets back?” argued the short scout.

“There’s no use at all,” remarked Allan, just then; “because I think I hear them coming along right now. How about it, Sebattis?”

“Three come, Thad, Davy, Eli,” replied the Indian, gravely; for Allan had first had his attention called to the slight sounds without by noticing that Sebattis was sitting with his head cocked in a listening attitude.

“I’d like to understand how he knows that,” muttered Giraffe, who had edged over toward the corner where his gun stood, as though a little suspicious of the identity of those who were even now at the door; for he remembered that there were exactly three of those lawless hoboes loose in the woods, and not far away.

But immediately the door opened, to admit Thad; and after him came Davy; while the weather-beaten face of the old Maine guide, Eli Crooks, showed up in the rear.

Each of the three hunters carried some sort of burden, though not of any great size, Allan noticed. These they tossed down in a corner, with the air of being more or less tired from a long tramp.

And Allan, accustomed to reading faces more than might the average boy, believed that he saw something like a frown upon all three countenances, that certainly must have been caused by something besides fatigue.

“Venison?” questioned Giraffe, just itching to have the newcomers ask what luck had fallen to the share of the bee hunters, when he could hold up that prized bearskin, and tell how he alone had shot the monster Bruin.

“Yes, what little of it was left to us,” replied Davy, crossly.

“Why, whatever happened?” demanded Bumpus. “I wonder now, did you run across any of those savage wolves we heard howling last night?”

“Oh! not much,” replied Thad, smiling; “that would have been a picnic—for us. But we had an experience that beat that all hollow. Fact is, we were fired at by some of those hoboes who are up here in the woods for their health, and safety!”