The Mountain Divide - Frank H. Spearman (english reading book .txt) 📗
- Author: Frank H. Spearman
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The bear, a full-grown male, met the onset of the hounds with grim confidence. The dogs encircled him with a ring of ferocious teeth, running in from behind whenever they could to nip the huge beast in the haunches or on the flank. But the surprise of the encounter was Scuffy.
“Look,” cried Bill Dancing, under whose wing Bucks had taken his post. “Look at him! Why, the pup is a world-beater!”
In truth, Scuffy was the liveliest and most impudent dog in the pack, and when the fight was fully on, managed to worry the angry bear more than the hounds did. Within a moment the black hound, over-bold, imprudently rushed the bear in front. A paw darting from the huge beast caught him like a trip-hammer and stretched him helpless. 104 In that moment the bear exposed himself to Stanley’s rifle and a shot rang across the mountain-side. Scott watched the result anxiously. But the slug instead of dropping the bear served only to enrage him. For an instant the two hounds lost their heads and the infuriated bear charged Bucks and Bill Dancing.
The shale opening became a scene of confusion. Exposing himself recklessly, Scott tried to urge the dogs forward, but they had lost their nerve. It needed only this to upset everything. The hunters closed in together, and the critical moment had come; deaf alike to command and entreaty, the two hounds refused to go in, and Scuffy, flying wildly about the bear, seemed unable to check him. Dancing stopped long enough to take one shot, and ran––with Bucks, who had found no chance to shoot, following. The bear gained fast on the long-legged lineman and his boy companion. A wash-out, hidden by a clump of bushes, lay directly in the path of flight. Dancing, perceiving it, dashed to the left and escaped. He shouted a warning to Bucks, who, not understanding, plunged straight over the declivity and 105 sprawled into the wash-out with the bear after him. Catching his rifle, the boy scrambled to his feet with his pursuer less than twenty feet away. Between the two there was only open ground, and the bear was scrambling for Bucks when Scuffy sprang down the shale bank and confronted the enemy.
It looked like certain death for Scuffy, but the tramp dog did not hesitate. He rushed at the bear with a fury of snapping, though not without a lively respect for the sweep of the brute’s fore paws. The little dog, freeing himself forever in that moment from the stigma of cur, put up a fight that astonished the big brute.
Scuffy raced at him first on one side and then on the other, bounding in and out like a rubber ball, dashing across his front and running clear around the circling bear, nipping even an occasional mouthful of hair from his haunches. He made noise enough for a pack of dogs and simulated a fury that gave the bear the surprise of his life. Bucks realized that only his four-legged friend stood between him and destruction and that so unequal a contest could not endure long. Skilful as 106 the little fellow was, he was pitted against an antagonist quite as quick and wary. The clumsiness of the bear was no more than seeming, and any one of the terrific blows he dealt at Scuffy with his huge paw would have stretched a man lifeless. Bucks, collecting his disordered faculties, raised his rifle to help his champion with a shot. His heart beat like a hammer in his throat, but he knew there was only one thing to do, that was to get the rifle-sights carefully lined in his eye and shoot when Scuffy gave him an opening.
It came in a moment when the bear turned to smash Scuffy on his flank. Bucks fired. To his amazement, no result followed. The failure of the bear to show any sign of being hit stunned him, and he drew his revolver, never expecting to escape alive, when two shots rang across the wash as close together as if fired by the same hand. The bear sank like a falling tree. Yet he rallied and again rushed for Bucks, despite Scuffy’s stout opposition and the yells from above, and finally halted only when Bob Scott, jumping into the wash-out, confronted him with a knife. There was 107 an instant of apprehension, broken by a third shot from Dancing’s rifle across the gully, and the bear crumpled lifeless almost at Scott’s feet.
The scout turned to Bucks as he stood dazed by his narrow escape. Stanley, above, shouted. And Bill Dancing, carrying his empty rifle, and with his face bleeding from the briers, made his way down the opposite side of the wash. Scuffy, mounting the body of his dead foe, barked furiously.
The little dog was the real hero of the encounter. He had paid his keep and earned his way as a member of the family and as a bear-fighter. When Bucks picked up his rifle he told Scott of his bad miss in the critical moment of the fight. Bob took the gun from his hands and examined the sights good-naturedly. Bucks had neglected to change the elevation after he had aimed at the deer an hour earlier.
“Next time you shoot at a bear twenty feet away, don’t leave your sights set for two hundred yards,” was all Scott said.
The bruises that Bucks nursed were tender for some days, and Scott tried out some bear’s grease for an ointment.
Scuffy, who had come out of the fight without a scratch, took on new airs in camp, and returned evil for evil by bullying the two wounded hounds who were too surprised by his aggressiveness to make an effective defence.
Bucks, when he was alone with the dog and time dragged heavily, turned for diversion to the only book in the camp, a well-thumbed copy of “The Last of the Mohicans.” He had brought it with him to read coming out from Pittsburgh, and had thrown it into his bag when leaving Medicine Bend. In camp it proved a treasure, even the troopers, when they were idle, casting lots to get hold of it.
One day, when Bucks was absorbed in the romance, Bob Scott asked him what he was reading. 109 Bucks tried to give him some idea of the story. Scott showed little apparent interest in the résumé, but he listened respectfully while cleaning his rifle. He made no comment until Bucks had done.
“What kind of Indians did you say those were,” he asked, contracting his brows as he did when a subject perplexed him, “Uncas and Chingachgook?”
“Delawares, Bob. Know anything about Delaware Indians?”
Scott shook his head. “Never heard of Delawares in our country. I saw a Pottawottamie Indian once, but never any Delawares. Is this story about Uncas a true story?”
“As true as any story. Listen here.” Bucks read aloud to him for a while, his companion at intervals asking questions and approving or criticising the Indian classic.
“If you could only read, Bob, you ought to read the whole book,” said Bucks regretfully, as he put the volume aside.
“I can read a little,” returned Scott, to Bucks’s 110 surprise. “All except the long words,” added the scout modestly. “A man down at Medicine Bend tried to sell me a pair of spectacles once. They had gold rims, and he told me that a man with those spectacles could read any kind of a book. He thought I was a greenhorn,” said the scout.
“Where did you learn to read?”
“A Blackrobe taught me.”
Bucks held out the book. “Then read this, Bob, sure.”
Scott looked at the worn volume, but shook his head doubtfully. “Looks like a pretty big book for me. But if you can find out whether it’s true, I might try it sometime.”
Stanley, after a few days, started up the river with Scott and Dancing, leaving his men in camp. Bucks, who was still too stiff to ride, likewise remained to receive any messages that might come.
There was an abundance of water-fowl in the sloughs and ponds up and down the river, and Bucks, the morning after Stanley’s departure, leaving the troopers lounging in camp, started out 111 with a shot-gun to look for ducks. He passed the first bend up-stream, and working his way toward a small pond thickly fringed with alders, where he had often seen teal and mallards, attempted to crawl within gunshot of it.
He was working his way in this fashion toward the edge of the water when he heard a clatter of wings and the next moment a flock of mallards rushed in swift flight over his head. He impulsively threw up his gun to fire but some instinct checked him. He was in a country of dangerous enemies and the thought of bears still loomed large in his mind. An instant’s reflection convinced him that it was not his movement that had frightened the ducks, and he was enough of a hunter to look further than that for the cause. As caution seemed, from the soreness of his legs and arms, plainly indicated, he lay still to await developments.
Soon he heard a movement of trampling feet, and, seemingly, across the pond from him. Bucks thought of buffaloes. His heart beat fast at the thought of getting a shot at one until he reflected 112 that he had no rifle. The next instant his heart stopped beating. Not ten feet from where he lay in the thick willows, an Indian carrying a rifle, and in war-paint, stole noiselessly along toward the camp. No sooner had he disappeared than a second brave followed, and while Bucks was digesting this fright a third warrior, creeping in the same stealthy manner and almost without a sound, passed the staring boy; the appearance of a fourth and a fifth raised the hair on Bucks’s head till he was almost stunned with fright, but he had still to count three more in the party, one more ferocious-looking than another, before all had passed.
What to do was the question that forced itself on him. He feared the Indians would attack the troopers in camp, and this he felt would be a massacre, since the men, not suspecting danger, would be taken wholly unawares. Should he fire his gun as a signal? It would probably bring the Indians back upon him, but the thought of allowing the troopers to be butchered was insupportable. His hammers were cocked and his finger 113 was on one trigger when he considered how useless the alarm would be. The troopers knew that he had gone duck hunting. They would expect to hear him shoot and would pay no attention to it. To rush out after the Indians would only invite his instant death.
There seemed nothing he could do and a cold sweat of apprehension broke over him. But if he fired his gun he might, at least, surprise the Indians. The report of a gun in their rear would alarm them––since they knew nothing of his presence or his duck hunting and might take fright. Without more ado he fired both barrels one after the other, careful only to shoot low into the willows, hoping the smoke would not rise so quickly as to betray him before he could make a dash for a new hiding-place.
His ruse worked and he
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