The Boy Scouts On The Range Part 27

"Got to get out of the sun," he thought in a dim, remote sort of way.

He voiced his thought aloud, and his tones sounded faint and far away to him, like the accents of another person.

"Brace up, Rob, brace up," he began repeating to himself, as he made for a patch of deep shadow under a bush covered with a kind of purple berry.

But in spite of his determination to "brace up," even the slight effort of crawling to the grateful shade bothered him so badly that, having reached it, he could only lie on his side and pant like an exhausted creature.

All at once a sound was borne to his ears that made him sit up erect--the bright light of hope gleaming in his eyes.

Heavy footsteps were coming toward him. The boy cared little whether the advancing individual was friend or foe. His coming meant food, at least; for surely no enemy could be so inhuman as to refuse nourishment to a boy in the pitiable condition of Rob Blake.

"There's something queer about those footsteps, though," mused the boy, as the sounds drew nearer, accompanied by a sort of low, growling grumbling.

What can it be?

"Sounds like--like---- Great Scott! Silver Tip!"

Into the small clearing on one side of which Rob lay beneath his sheltering bush, there had suddenly lumbered the half-legendary monarch of the Santa Catapinas.

It was Silver Tip, the giant grizzly! For a second the monster's small, piglike eyes glared in blank astonishment at the encounter. He was hunting honey, and this sudden meeting with a white boy in the wildest part of his own particular domain evidently had struck him "in a heap,"

so to speak.

The next instant, however, the expression of his wicked little optics changed to one of active malevolence. He swung his great bulk savagely about--like the giant heavings and swayings of a picketed elephant. The small spot of snow-white hair that gave him his name shone out on his dark, s.h.a.ggy hide like a bull's-eye. It was right over his heart. If Rob had had a rifle, he could have pierced it as unerringly as a target.

[Ill.u.s.tration: With a crazy yell, the boy leaped to his feet and rushed straight at his monstrous s.h.a.ggy opponent.]

But the lad was weaponless, and almost unconscious from fatigue and exhaustion. Indeed, delirium had been dangerously near when Silver Tip came lumbering into the clearing. The sight of the monster had tipped the delicately adjusted balance.

With a crazy yell, the boy leaped to his feet and rushed straight at his monstrous s.h.a.ggy opponent. In sheer astonishment, Silver Tip reared his immense bulk upward.

"Ha, ha! I'll kill you, you old thief, you old murderer!" yelled Rob deliriously, as he hurled his slight form straight against the monstrous hairy tower of rugged strength.

The great forepaws--armed with claws as sharp and heavy as chilled-steel chisels--extended. In another instant the lad would have been in the monster's death grip, when an intervention, as sudden as it was unexpected, occurred.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE INDIAN AGENT.

From the dense surrounding clumps of chaparral there had suddenly emerged the figure of a tall, bearded man, with keen blue eyes and a striking air of self-reliance and resolution. It was Mr. Mayberry, the Indian agent. Over his arm he carried an automatic rifle, which he instantly jerked to his shoulder as his amazed eyes fell on the extraordinary scene before him. Surely Jeffries Mayberry was the first man who had ever gazed upon the spectacle of a boy, unarmed and alone, attacking the hugest grizzly in that part of the country.

"The boy is mad!" was his first thought, and, as we know, he was not far wrong in this surmise.

But it was no time for speculation as to the causes of this strange scene, and Jeffries Mayberry was not the man to indulge in rumination when the necessity called for immediate action.

Bang!

For the twentieth--or was it the hundredth?--time in his eventful life, Silver Tip felt the impingement of a bullet. But with the monster's usual good fortune, the ball did not pierce a vital part. Instead, it buried itself in the fleshy part of the brute's forequarters, inflicting a wound that made him bellow with pain and face round on this new foe.

As Silver Tip, in regal majesty, swung his huge form about, Rob crumpled up in a heap and lay senseless on the hot ground.

For an instant it looked as if the great monarch of the Santa Catapinas meant to attack the Indian agent. But it seemed that he changed his mind as he faced him. An animal so relentlessly hunted, and so often wounded as Silver Tip, becomes endowed with almost human cunning and reasoning power, and part of Silver Tip's immunity from mortal wounds had doubtless been due to this. Most grizzlies, when wounded, charge furiously on their tormentors, thus a.s.suring their fatal injury. These had never been Silver Tip's tactics. He had always preferred to "fight and run away, and live to fight some other day."

So it was now. For the s.p.a.ce of a breath, the two splendid specimens of human kind and the animal kingdom stared into each other's eyes. In his admiration of the magnificent brute before him, Jeffries Mayberry held his fire. He could not bring himself to kill the splendid creature unless such an action became necessary in self-defense. Were there more hunters like him, our forests and plains would not have become devastated of many of the species once so plentiful among them.

Suddenly the bear's eyes turned away under the steady scrutiny of the plainsman, and with a growl that was half a whine, he dropped on all fours and lumbered off.

"Lucky for you you didn't hurt this boy, or even your splendid majesty wouldn't have saved you," muttered Jeffries Mayberry, reaching the unconscious Rob's side in three or four rapid strides.

"Hum! in bad shape," he murmured, laying open the boy's blue flannel shirt and placing a hand over his heart. "Good thing I happened along when I did, and---- Hullo!" he gave a long, low whistle of astonishment.

"It's one of those kids that my bad boy Moquis held up this side of Mesaville. Well, here's a discovery."

He stood erect, and placing his fingers to his lips, blew a shrill, piercing call.

The next instant a splendid cream-colored horse came bounding into the clearing, shaking his head impatiently and whinnying as his large liquid eyes fell on his master.

"Here, Ranger," said Mayberry, addressing the beautiful steed as if it had possessed the faculty of understanding. "Here is a poor boy overcome for want of food and water, and I think he's got a touch of the sun.

We've got to get him home, Ranger."

Ranger pawed the ground with one forefoot and his nostrils dilated. His keen senses indicated to him that a bear had been about, and if there is one creature of which Western horses are thoroughly afraid it is his majesty, King Bruin.

Perceiving this, Mayberry spoke a few rea.s.suring words to the splendid horse, which instantly quieted down, though it still glanced apprehensively about it. The Indian agent's next action was to place Rob's senseless form across the saddle, while he himself swung rapidly up behind the cantle.

Lightly pressing the rein to the left side of his horse's glossy neck, the Indian agent urged it forward into the chaparral. Ranger's dainty skin shivered at the rough touch of the p.r.i.c.kly stuff, but he went unflinchingly in the direction his master guided him.

After an hour or more of riding, Mayberry emerged on a curiously located open s.p.a.ce. It lay at the bottom of a saucer-like depression, which might, in some remote day, have been a volcanic fire basin. Now, however, it was covered with a luxuriant growth of wild oats, and at the bottom bubbled up a little spring. All about it shot up scarred mountain sides, with scanty timber hanging to their rocky ribs. In the midst of this isolation and wilderness it looked strange to see a small cabin located. It was somewhat tumbledown, to be sure, and had, in fact, been erected there in the early fifties by a wandering prospector.

Jeffries Mayberry, seeking a convenient spot from which to keep up his surveillance over his Moquis, had stumbled upon it by accident, and with an old woodsman's skill had rendered it quite habitable.

So, at least, Rob thought, when half an hour later he recovered consciousness in the cool gloom of the shanty. He was lying on a bed of fragrant boughs, and above him was the shingle roof of the hut, through holes in which he could see the blue sky.

"Where on earth am I?" was Rob's first thought, as consciousness rushed back like a tide that has been temporarily stemmed.

Gradually the events preceding his collapse grew clear to him, and he retraced recent happenings up to the appearance of the grizzly. Of his delirious attack upon the monster, he had, of course, no recollection.

"I must get up and find out where this is, and how I got here," was Rob's first thought, and with this intention he rose to his feet. To his intense astonishment, the room instantly whirled dizzily about him, and the earthen floor seemed to rise and smite him in the face. What had happened was that the weakened boy had fallen headlong. As he lay there, a hearty voice rang out in an amused tone:

"h.e.l.lo, h.e.l.lo! Pretty weak, ain't you, for a boy who wanted to fight grizzlies with his bare hands?"

Rob looked up. The big form of Jeffries Mayberry stood framed in the doorway.

He came forward and, gently as a woman, placed Rob on the couch.

"Why--why, it's Mr. Mayberry!" gasped Rob, as his eyes fell on his companion's kindly, bearded features.

"Yes, it's me, right enough," laughed the Indian agent. "And now, if you'll lie quiet for a minute, I'll see how some rabbit stew is getting along. How does that sound?"