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A regular war-dance was performed about the slain marauder by the young Sinclairs and Dol Farrar, when these laggards in the chase reached the spot where he fell. The firebrands had all died out before the enemy turned; but in the white moon-radiance the bear was seen to be a big one, with an uncommonly fine skin.
Neal took no part in the triumphal capers. He still leaned upon his rifle, his breath coming in gusty puffs through his nostrils and mouth. Not alone the desperate sensations of those moments when he had faced the gnashing, mumbling brute, but the unexpected success of his first shot at big game, had unhinged him. By his endurance in the chase, by the pluck with which he stood up to the bear, above all, by his being able, as Joe phrased it, to "take a sure pull on the beast at a paralyzing moment," he had eternally justified his right to the title of sportsman in the eyes of the natives. The guides, Joe and Eb, were not slow in telling him that he had behaved from start to finish like no "greenhorn," but a regular "old sport."
"My cracky! 'twas lucky for me that you had game blood in you, which showed up," exclaimed Joe, catching the boy's arm in a friendly grip, with an odd respect in his touch, which marked the admission of young Farrar into the brotherhood of hunters. "I hadn't a charge left, an' not even my hunting-knife. Lots o' city swells 'u'd have been plumb scared before a growler like that,"—touching Bruin's carcass with his foot,—"even if they had a small arsenal to back 'em up. They'd have dropped rifle and cartridges, and hugged the nearest trunk. I've seen fellers do it scores o' times, bless ye! after they came out here rigged up in sporting-book style, talking fire about hunting bears and moose. But that was all the fire there was to 'em."
Yet Neal's triumph over the poor brute, which had raced well for its life, was not without a faint twinge of pain; and he was too manly to look on this as a weakness. A sportsman he might be, of the sort who can shoot straight when necessity demands it, but never of that class who prowl through the forests with fingers tingling to pull the trigger, dreading to lose a chance of "letting blood" from any slim-legged moose or velvet-nosed buck which may run their way. It needed Doc's praise to make him feel fully satisfied with his deed.
"It was a crack shot, boy," said the doctor proudly. "And I guess the farmer at the next settlement will feel like giving you a medal for it. Old Bruin has only got what he gave to every creature he could master."
There being no tree conveniently near to which they could string up the dead bear, the guides decided to leave the ugly matter of skinning and dissecting him for morning light. The excited party returned to camp, but not to sleep. They built up their scattered fire, squatted round it, and discoursed of the night's adventure until a clear dawn-gleam brightened the eastern sky. Then Uncle Eb and Joe started out again across the brûlée . They reappeared before breakfast-time, bringing Bruin's skin and a goodly portion of his meat.
Joe laid the hide at Neal's feet.
"There, boy," he said, "the skin is yours. It belongs rightly to the man who killed the bear; and I guess the brute wasn't mortally hurt at all till your bullet nipped him in the neck."
"But what about the fifteen dollars from that New York man, Joe? You'll lose it," faltered young Farrar, with a triumphant heart-leap at the thought of taking this trophy back to England, but loath to profit by the woodsman's generosity.
"Don't you bother about that; let it go," answered Joe, whose business of guiding was profitable enough for him. "'Tain't enough for the skin, anyhow. Nary a finer one has been taken out o' Maine in the last five years; and mighty lucky you Britishers were to git a chance of a bear-hunt at all. Old Bruin must have been powerful hungry to come around our camp."
There was a grand breakfast before the travellers broke camp that morning. The guides and Doc—who had got accustomed to the luxury during visits to settlers and lumber-camps—feasted off bear-steaks. Cyrus and the boys, American and English, declined to touch it. The whole appearance of Bruin as he lay stretched on the ground the night before made their "department of the interior" revolt against it.
When a start was made for the settlement, Joe bundled up the skin, and, as a tribute of respect to Neal's "game blood," carried it, in addition to his heavy pack, for a distance of four miles over the desolate brûlée and across a soft, miry bog. On reaching the farm clearing, he cut the stem of a tall cedar bush, which he bent into the shape of a hoop, binding the ends together with cedar bark. He then pricked holes all around the edges of the hide with the sharp point of his hunting-knife, stretched it to its full extent, and fastened it to the hoop, which he hung up to a tree near the settler's cabin, telling Neal that in a few days it would be dry enough to pack away in a bag.
But as it was a cumbersome article to carry while tramping a dozen miles farther to the camp on Millinokett Lake, the farmer offered to take charge of it for its owner until he passed that way again on his return journey; an offer which Neal thankfully accepted. The old backwoodsman was, truth to tell, delighted to see hanging up near his cabin door the skin of an enemy who had ofttimes plundered him so unmercifully.
He made the travellers royally welcome, let them have the roomy kitchen of his log shanty to sleep in, with a soft bed of hay. Here he lay with them, while his wife and sickly little girl occupied an adjoining space about twelve feet square, which had been boarded off. This was all the accommodation the log home afforded.
The forest child was a puzzle to the lads. To them she looked as if the soul of a grandmother had taken possession of a thin, long-limbed body which ought to belong to a girl of ten. Her pinched features and over-wise eyes told a tale of suffering, and so did her high-pitched, quivering voice, as it made elfishly sharp remarks about the boys until they blenched before her.
This was the little one of whom the doctor had said "that she fretted if he did not come to see her once in a while." And with Doc she was a different being. Her voice softened, her eyes became childlike, and thin tinkles of laughter broke from her as she clung to him, and received certain presents of medicines and picture-books which he had brought for her in a corner of his knapsack.
For two nights the travellers slept in a row on their hay bed; for two long-remembered days the five boys roamed the country round the clearing, starting deer, catching glimpses of a wildcat, a marten or two, and of another coon. Then came, to use Dol's expression, "the beastly nuisance of saying good-by."
Dr. Phil was obliged to return to Greenville; and he declared that now he must surely start his nephews homeward, for Royal expected to graduate from the High School during the following year, and to let him waste more time from study would be questionable kindness. Joe Flint of course would go back with his party. And here Cyrus paid Uncle Eb's fees for guiding, and dismissed him too.
Only a dozen miles of tolerably easy travelling now separated Garst and his English comrades from the camp on Millinokett Lake, where they were to meet the redoubtable Herb Heal. The settler, knowing this tract of country as thoroughly as he knew his own few fields, offered to lead our trio for the first half of their onward march; and as they could follow a plain trail for the remainder of the way, they had no further need of their guide's services. They promised to visit Eb at his bark hut on their return journey, to bid him a final farewell, and hear one more stave of:—
"Ketch him, Tiger, ketch him!"
"Good-by, you lucky fellows!" said Royal Sinclair huskily, as he gripped Neal's hand, then Dol's, in a brotherly squeeze when the hour of parting came. "I wish I was going on with you. We've had a stunning good time together, haven't we? And we'll run across each other in these woods some time or other again, I know! You'll never feel satisfied to stay in England, where there's nothing to hunt but hares and foxes, after chasing bears and moose."
"Oh! we'll come out here again, depend upon it," answered Neal. "Drop me a line occasionally, won't you, Roy? Here's our Manchester address."
"I will, if you'll do the same."
"Agreed. Good-by again, old fellow!"
"I've got the slip of birch-bark and the horn safe in my knapsack, Doc," Dol was saying meanwhile, feeling his eyes getting leaky as he bade farewell to the doctor. "I—I'll keep them as long as I live."
Doctor Phil had been as good as his word. He had made Joe rip the slip of white bark, with the rude writing on it, off the pine-tree near the swamp, and had presented it to Dol ere the boy quitted his camp.
"Well, confusion to partings anyhow!" broke in Joe. "Don't like 'em a bit. Hope you'll get that bear-skin safe to England, Neal. When you show it to your folks at home, tell 'em Joe Flint said he knew one Britisher who would make a woodsman if he got a chance. Don't you forgit it."
"Good-by," said the doctor, as he clasped in turn the hands of the departing three. "Good luck to you, boys! Keep your souls as straight as your bodies, and you'll be a trio worth knowing. We'll meet again some day; I'm sure of it."
Martin and Will were chirping farewells, and lamenting that they would have no more chances of studying water-snakes in sedgy pools with Dol. Amid cheers and waving of hats the campers separated.
"Forward, Company Three!" cried Cyrus encouragingly, stepping briskly ahead, his comrades following. "Now for a sight of the 'Jabberwock' of the forest, the mighty moose. Hurrah for the wild woods and all woodsmen!"