CHAPTER XIX.

ANOTHER SHOCK.

"He was a buster, just as you said, Allan," Giraffe remarked, uneasily, after they had examined the imprint of those feet, showing the marks of the long cruel claws.

"A grizzly, I reckon?" Step Hen ventured.

"Yes. And I think he must have been hurt some, because he seemed to drag his left hind leg a little."

"P'raps Bumpus plugged him," Giraffe suggested, just as though he were speaking of some celebrated forest ranger, accustomed to meeting up with these terrors of the Rockies, rather than a fat scout who, up to recently, had been looked upon by most of his comrades as something of a joke.

"No, Bumpus was some distance away right here," Allan continued. "There is no sign of blood, so we know from that the injury was not a fresh one. And besides, whoever heard of a full-grown grizzly running away from a dozen human enemies, after being shot and wounded, much less from a single foe, and he a boy?"

"You're right, Allan," commented the scoutmaster.

"Reckon it does look that way," Giraffe admitted.

There was one good trait about the tall scout--no matter how strong an opinion he might have on any subject, once convinced of the error of his thinking, and Giraffe would own up to his mistake most cheerfully.

"So right here," Step Hen broke in, "Bumpus was on the run, achasin' fast after the limpin' grizzly? Say, Giraffe, he was in your class of cripples, because Allan says it was his _left_ hind leg that was hurt."

"Well, I ain't got but one left leg so that makes all the difference," the tall scout hastened to announce.

"I wonder--" began Step Hen, and then paused, as though hardly daring to frame his thoughts in words.

"We're all doing that," remarked Allan.

"How did it end?" Thad remarked, straining his eyes to look ahead.

"Say, wouldn't it be just great now," Giraffe broke out with, "if we'd just come up with Bumpus asquattin' in the crotch of a tree, all his ammunition fired away, and that old bear sittin' on his haunches below, awaitin' for him to come down?"

"I'd just like to see it," said Step Hen, making a suggestive gesture with his gun. "I'd try to drive a few dum-dum bullets into his hulking old carcase."

"But perhaps Bumpus mightn't be so smart about getting up in a tree, when a wounded bear was charging him," Giraffe ventured to remark.

All of them had a painful recollection of that other episode, when Bumpus, rashly discharged his ten-bore Marlin at the monster, and would have been caught trying to climb a tree, only for the help he received from one of his comrades.

"But Bumpus doesn't make the same mistake twice, I notice," said Thad, firmly; "and if he fired at _this_ bear, I'm pretty sure he first of all had a tree picked out that he could climb, all right."

"I warrant you he did, Thad," Giraffe added.

They were all of them only too eager to believe the best. The very thought of Bumpus, after all the good work he had been doing, meeting such a dreadful fate as being torn to pieces by a bear, was something they tried to banish from their minds as incredible.

Nevertheless, in spite of all this outward display of confidence, they continued to cast eager glances ahead as they pushed on.

Giraffe about this time remembered that there were others also interested in the fate of the lone scout.

"I see Hank and Pierre are keepin' right along?" he remarked.

"Yes," replied Allan, thinking this was really a question.

"Mebbe they think a nice bear skin wouldn't be a bad article to have, even if it is the off season for furs," Giraffe added.

"More'n likely," Step Hen broke in with, "they reckon as how they'd better keep along, so as to bury what's left of our poor chum, and claim his rifle and other belongings as salvage."

"Let's hope then they'll meet up with the greatest disappointment of their lives," Thad hastened to remark, shivering at the cruel picture the words of Step Hen presented to his mind.

"Listen!"

They all came to a standstill when Giraffe called out. Every ear was strained in the attempt to catch a sound that might be a cry for help, or the distant report of a gun.

"Guess it must a been that old crow cawing himself hoarse over yonder on that tree," Giraffe finally admitted. "Thought it was somebody callin' us to halt, sure I did, Thad."

"Seems like you were mistaken," was all the scoutmaster remarked, as once again the march was resumed.

"P'raps he didn't overtake the old bear after all," Step Hen broke out with, a couple of minutes later.

"Well, he was following the trail, all right, when he got here," Allan asserted, with a positive way that seemed convincing.

"But you said at first he saw the bear, when he took to running."

"I thought he did," replied the trail hunter, "but since then I've come to the conclusion I was wrong. Still, you can see that he kept on, for bear, Bumpus and the two men are written in the tracks as plain as print."

"Yes, that's so, Allan. But there don't seem to be any sign of life ahead. Here, what's the matter with you, Old Eagle Eye? Just look beyond, and see if you c'n discover our brave chum up a tree somewhere?"

Thus appealed to, and complimented rather than otherwise by the title which Step Hen had thrust upon him, Giraffe did stretch his long neck, and scan the region ahead.

"Don't see him a waiving to us, up in one of those trees?" the other asked.

"Nixy," returned the one with the keen vision, a shade of disappointment perceptible in his voice. "I c'n see heaps of trees, and p'raps there might be a boy sittin' up in one of the same; but if he's waving to us, I don't get on to his wave. But hold on!"

"Oh! then you _do_ see something?" cried Step Hen, pulling back the hammer of his repeating rifle eagerly.

"Not in a tree," replied Giraffe, cautiously.

Something in his manner, perhaps in his paling face as well, gave Thad a nervous chill. As for himself, he had not discovered anything amiss; but perhaps his range of vision was more limited than that of the tall scout; or possibly he did not chance to be looking in the same direction.

"Where then?" asked Step Hen.

"Er--on the ground," replied the other, slowly and soberly.

"Is--do you think it's Bumpus?" demanded Step Hen, also losing his color.

"I don't know. There's a little bush in the way, and I can't see very well," Giraffe added.

"But--does it move any, Giraffe?" the horrified Step Hen asked.

"Don't seem to, one bit, all the time I've been keepin' my eye on the same."

"Oh! my stars."

Step Hen could not command his voice to say more. He kept staring in a general direction ahead, as though he could see what attracted the notice of the chum who had the telescopic eyes.

But Thad was not so easily satisfied.

"Show me where you mean, Giraffe," he said, grimly.

If there was any unpleasant duty to be performed Thad Brewster could be depended on to go about it without flinching. He would have made a fine soldier, because discipline was so much a part of his nature.

"There, follow those three trees that run as straight a line as if some surveyor had a planted the same for range finders. D'ye see that light bunch of scrub just beyond? All right, look just to the left, and----"

"I see it!" said Thad, quietly.

A dozen seconds of dreadful suspense followed. Then Step Hen, who had managed to recover his lost breath, broke forth with:

"Is it Bumpus, Thad?"

"I don't believe so," replied the scoutmaster, steadily, and it could easily be seen that he must have just been under a terrible strain.

"What makes you say that; I'm asking for information, but all the same I'm awful glad to hear you make that remark," Giraffe observed.

"In the first place it doesn't seem to be the color of our chum's clothes," Thad began, "and then, on the other hand, it's certainly too big to be him."

"Guess you hit the nail on the head there, Thad," Giraffe hastened to declare; "now that I look closer, I reckon it is just too big."

"Mebbe it's only a rock after all, or an old stump," suggested Step Hen.

"Mebbe it is," replied the tall scout, meekly, for his feelings had been so recently torn by conflicting hopes and fears, that he was in no mood for argument.

"Let's push forward and see," suggested Allan.

"Trail seems to lead that way, don't it?" Thad mentioned, when they had been moving along swiftly for a few minutes.

"Yes, and we'll soon know the worst, because, unless I'm much mistaken the _thing_ is lying just at the other side of them bushes. They're thicker here, you see, and we won't be able to tell what it's doing till after we get around the same."

Giraffe had a habit of talking at a lively pace when wishing to keep his heart from betraying his nervousness. It was somewhat on the principle that a boy whistles as loud as he can when passing a country graveyard.

Half a minute later, and in a bunch the four scouts turned a flank movement around the bushes. Step Hen and Giraffe almost dropped with sheer astonishment, and had to actually sustain each other. No wonder, when before them they saw the motionless form of a huge bear, that had evidently been shot in a dozen places.