"There he is!" cried Bo, as the hound bayed ringingly, closer to them this time, and she spurred away.
Helen's horse followed without urging. He was excited. His ears were up. Something was in the wind. Helen had never ridden along this broken end of the park, and Bo was not easy to keep up with. She led across bogs, brooks, swales, rocky little ridges, through stretches of timber and groves of aspen so thick Helen could scarcely squeeze through. Then Bo came out into a large open offshoot of the park, right under the mountain slope, and here she sat, her horse watching and listening. Helen rode up to her, imagining once that she had heard the hound.
"Look! Look!" Bo's scream made her mustang stand almost straight up.
Helen gazed up to see a big brown bear with a frosted coat go lumbering across an opening on the slope.
"It's a grizzly! He'll kill Pedro! Oh, where is Dale!" cried Bo, with intense excitement.
"Bo! That bear is running down! We--we must get--out of his road," panted Helen, in breathless alarm.
"Dale hasn't had time to be close.... Oh, I wish he'd come! I don't know what to do."
"Ride back. At least wait for him."
Just then Pedro spoke differently, in savage barks, and following that came a loud growl and crashings in the brush. These sounds appeared to be not far up the slope.
"Nell! Do you hear? Pedro's fighting the bear," burst out Bo. Her face paled, her eyes flashed like blue steel. "The bear 'll kill him!"
"Oh, that would be dreadful!" replied Helen, in distress. "But what on earth can we do?"
"HEL-LO, DALE!" called Bo, at the highest pitch of her piercing voice.
No answer came. A heavy crash of brush, a rolling of stones, another growl from the slope told Helen that the hound had brought the bear to bay.
"Nell, I'm going up," said Bo, deliberately.
"No-no! Are you mad?" returned Helen.
"The bear will kill Pedro."
"He might kill you."
"You ride that way and yell for Dale," rejoined Bo.
"What will--you do?" gasped Helen.
"I'll shoot at the bear--scare him off. If he chases me he can't catch me coming downhill. Dale said that."
"You're crazy!" cried Helen, as Bo looked up the slope, searching for open ground. Then she pulled the rifle from its sheath.
But Bo did not hear or did not care. She spurred the mustang, and he, wild to run, flung grass and dirt from his heels. What Helen would have done then she never knew, but the fact was that her horse bolted after the mustang. In an instant, seemingly, Bo had disappeared in the gold and green of the forest slope. Helen's mount climbed on a run, snorting and heaving, through aspens, brush, and timber, to come out into a narrow, long opening extending lengthwise up the slope.