Chapter 8: A Sudden Encounter

Work and interest! New discoveries! Fresh wonders every day! A keenness and zest in life that Herbert a month or two ago would have thought impossible in such a place! Such were their days. Charles, on another expedition into the canyon, found his horse and mule. They had joined the larger group, brought by the Professor and Jed, had affiliated perfectly, and were grazing in great peace and content on a little grassy meadow. Charles judged that however severe the winter might be, and however deep the snowfall, they would find grass and shelter in secluded alcoves of the canyon, and so he let them alone.

But the plateau above and behind the village and the slopes beyond furnished them with the greatest interests for the present. It was a well wooded and well watered country, abounding in game, and they found there excellent supplies for the coming winter. They also discovered a hot spring, the waters of which the Professor, after testing, announced to contain strong, healing properties. Many tracks around it showed that the wild animals took the same view.

A day or two later Charles, while hunting, killed a great stag near the hot spring. The body was too heavy for him to handle, even had he skinned and cleaned it, and, considering it safe, he left it there to return the next day with Herbert, thinking that the two would be equal to the task.

The boys went down through some thick bushes to the little open space in which the body lay.

“Here we are, Herbert,” said Charles, parting the last of the bushes and pushing into the open space, Herbert close upon his heels. They were saluted by a tremendous growl, a deep, full-throated, ominous roar. The two boys shrank back appalled, a form of burnt sienna color upreared itself almost directly above them. They looked into a dripping mouth, and saw above the mouth little eyes, inflamed with anger. They had run into a grizzly bear, feeding on the deer that Charles had slain.

“Jump! Jump back for your life, Herbert!” exclaimed Charles. “It’s a grizzly!”

He had heard all his life that an angry grizzly was the most terrible of wild animals, and he knew that this could be none other. Instinctively he sprang back as he shouted, and escaped a sweep of the mighty paw. The same instinct caused him to jerk up his rifle and fire. The bullet struck the grizzly in the shoulder, but the big fellow, uttering a terrible roar, came straight at Charles. Herbert had stood still, as if deprived of the power of motion. He was a little on one side of the bear’s path, but Charles saw him suddenly reel, struck by the grizzly’s paw, and then the bear seemed to lurch against him as he fell and send him to the earth with a great thud.

Charles heard a cry. A thrill of agony shot through him because he felt sure that Herbert was killed, and the next moment the breath of old Ephraim was almost in his face again. He had the presence of mind to shove another cartridge into his rifle and fire a second shot. The bear roared, wheeled half around and tore at his breast with his paws. Charles, using the moment of grace, sprang to one side, reloaded and fired a third shot. The bear staggered, but recovered and rushed at him once more.

All happened in a daze to Charles. He never could remember the details clearly, but he knew that the woods helped him. He sprang from one tree to another, dodging the bear, and all the time firing steel bullets into him. The vitality of the great animal was amazing, but at last he uttered a kind of sobbing roar, fell down upon his fore-paws, then upon his side, and lay quite still, his mouth open and the blood coming from a half dozen wounds. Charles knew by his fixed eye that he was dead, but so tremendous had been the great bear’s attack and struggle that it was his first impulse to fire two or three more bullets into his body. He put it aside and rushed to Herbert.

Herbert was lying half upon his side, half upon his back. His eyes were closed, and his face was quite white, save where the blood dripped upon it from a great red welt across his head.

Charles, with a cry of grief, dropped upon his knees beside his comrade. He felt for the pulse in the wrist, but there was none. When he let the wrist go, wrist and hand fell like a piece of wood to the earth. Herbert was surely dead and Charles was stricken by a great and terrible sorrow!

“Herbert! Herbert!” he cried, but Herbert made no answer.

Then Charles bethought himself of the hot spring, bubbling up not twenty yards away. He ran to it, and filled his hat with its hot, bitter waters. Much of it leaked out as he returned, but enough remained for him to pour a copious and powerful stimulant down Herbert’s throat. A little gasping sigh came forth and filled Charles with delight. Herbert was not dead! And now he could feel a pulse in his wrist! But it was a very small, feeble and fluttering pulse, and he began to chafe vigorously Herbert’s palms and temples. The fluttering little pulse grew stronger, and after a while Herbert opened his eyes.

“Who—who is it?” he said feebly.

“It’s me, Charles, your comrade, and we’ve had a fight with a bear! Here, wait a minute, I’ll bring you more of that water!”

He rushed to the spring and returned with another hatful. Herbert was in no condition to resist, and Charles making a scoop of his felt hat brim poured it into his mouth. Herbert strangled and cried out in protest, but his strength increased and he sat up.

“How my head aches,” he said. “I thought that somebody hit me across it with a stick of wood, and that a moment later a house fell on me.”

“That’s just about what happened,” said Charles. “Here, let me see that wound.”

He examined it carefully. It was fully five inches long, and was swollen, but Charles saw that it had not been made by a claw. He inferred that the bear in one of his wild swings had struck Herbert a terrible blow with the side of his paw, and then had run against him as he fell, blow and shock together coming very near to killing him.

“You’re all right, Herbert,” said Charles cheerfully. “It’s just a bruise. What did you mean anyway by running into a thousand-pound grizzly in that fashion? Didn’t you know that you’d get the worst of it?”

Herbert smiled weakly.

“It was my first experience,” he said.

“Never mind. The bear came out of the little end of the horn after all.”

“You killed him, did you, Charlie?” said Herbert in admiration.

“Yes, because I was lucky enough not to be in the way of that sweep of his paw. But I think I must have put at least fifty pounds of metal into him. He’s lying here in the bushes. Come, take a look, Herbert, old fellow.”

Charles helped him to his feet, and then the two, Herbert leaning on Charles’ arm, walked to the great bear, and looked down at his fallen figure.

“What a monster!” said Herbert, shuddering.

“Yes, but he’ll never whack a boy with his paw again. He was a thief anyway. He was stealing our deer, and he’s got what was coming to him. We can’t do anything just now, Herbert, with either bear or deer. We’ve got to leave them to chance, and get ourselves back to the village.”

It was slow progress. Herbert could not walk far without resting, and the wound continued to swell. Besides his head still ached badly, and all the strength seemed to go out of his bones. But he was full of pluck. He struggled on, and Charles was often compelled to insist upon his resting.

“Say, old fellow, sit down on that rock,” he would say. “I’d have had to do it earlier, if I had been in your place.”

Then, but not before, Herbert would rest. At last they saw the light of “home,” Jed’s cooking fire, and Charles helped Herbert slowly down the pole ladder. Jed saw them and came forward in amazement.

“Why, Herb,” he exclaimed, “what you been doin’ to your head?”

“He’s been trying to sing,” Charles replied for his comrade, “and I hit him over the head with a stick. I said that only one man in our camp could sing and that was you, Jed. Two singers are entirely too many. I’m sorry, but I think I hit him a little harder than I intended.”

“Quit your joshin’,” said Jed. “What’s Herb been really an’ truly doin’? Fallin’ over one o’ them thar precipices, I’ll bet a nickel.”

“No, I didn’t fall, Jed,” said Herbert, “I’ll tell you the whole truth about the case. I met a grizzly bear, and I said to him: ‘I don’t like your looks.’ ‘No more do I yours,’ says he, and with that he fetches me a swipe on the side of the head with a paw a yard long, a foot wide and a foot thick. Then as I went down he fell on me, and he weighed at least twenty thousand pounds. When I woke up about a month later Charlie was standing by me and he said, ‘It’s all right, Herbert, I challenged that bear to a duel because he insulted you and I’ve killed him.’ Sure enough he had.”

“Great snakes!” exclaimed Jed. “Have you had a run-in with a grizzly?”

“Look at my head,” said Herbert.

The Professor arrived a few minutes later, and at once went to work on Herbert’s head. He brought out the medicine chest, without which he never traveled, carefully washed and anointed the wound, and then covered it with strips of sticking plaster.

“I’ll mix you a soothing draught, and then you’d better go to bed,” he said. “When you wake tip I think that headache will be gone, and a few more applications of this medicine will keep the fever out of your wound. You’ll be well in a week.”

The Professor spoke truly, as Herbert was as sound as ever at the time appointed. But the Professor and Charles went the next day to the scene of the battle.

“You had a fortunate escape,” said the Professor on the way. “You came suddenly upon the animal, when he was feeding, and a grizzly cornered at such a time is a ferocious and terrible beast.”

“I did not know that grizzlies were found as far south as this,” said Charles.

“They range all the way down to Northern Mexico, although I imagine that they have always been pretty scarce in this region. The black and cinnamon bears are more plentiful here.”

“We’re nearly to the spot,” said Charles. “It’s just through these bushes.”

They pushed into the little opening, and as they entered it they heard a flapping of wings. They saw a huge bird with a great hooked bill rise heavily, and sail slowly away. The Professor grasped Charles’ arm.

“You do not have all the luck,” he exclaimed. “Look! A king vulture! It’s almost as large as a condor, the greatest of all birds. I knew that this region was its habitat, but they are very rare and I never saw one before.”