Bob was trying vainly to get a decent aim as he shouted these words of warning. He had spoken them in a mechanical way, and not because he feared that his chum would not be on his guard.
Already were Bart and Scotty popping away with their guns, after the fashion of cowboys, quick on the trigger. Then Bob suddenly noticed a queer thing. This was nothing more or less than that the grizzly, while still coming down the side of the mountain, and headed directly for the spot where they stood, seemed to have swerved more or less. In fact he was coming down tail foremost!
It was this singular fact that gave Bob his first suspicion of the truth. Then, quick on the heels of this he discovered that Frank was acting in a most peculiar fashion for a boy who ought to be greatly concerned because a ferocious beast was about to attack them.
Frank seemed to double up like a hinge, and to the amazement of Bob he saw that the other was laughing!
“Hold on, boys!” Frank managed to call out; “don’t waste your ammunition, because you may need it. That bear is dead!”
Of course, upon hearing this surprising and agreeable news, both Bart and Scotty stopped shooting.
“Did they kill him, or was it our first bullets that did the trick, Frank?” Bob asked, as the body of the monster became wedged against an uplifted spur of rock not ten feet away.
“We don’t take the credit, you understand,” announced Bart, positively, and with a rather foolish grin at the recent panic he and Scotty had indulged in.
“I reckon we don’t need to,” remarked the other cowboy, energetically. “These here pop-guns don’t count much agin a grizzly. An’ when ye come to look the critter over, I allow ye’ll find whar ye punctured his hide right back o’ the foreleg, both bullets enterin’ thar.”
It proved to be a fact, upon examination; and Bob felt particularly well satisfied to know that in such an emergency he had managed to acquit himself so well. Such results seemed to show that his nerve was all right.
“But we can’t let the old fellow lie here,” said Frank.
“Why, what harm can a dead bear do?” he asked. “I should think that all the fight had gone out of him by now.”
“Sure it has,” answered his chum; “but you’d never get that skittish herd past this spot, let me tell you. They would scent that bear fifty feet away. Dead or alive, it wouldn’t make much difference to them, and we’d be apt to have a stampede on our hands. How about that, Bart?”