Part 48 (2/2)

”So I have been informed,” Mr. Hicks replied, conservatively.

Pinkey was about to say that bears travelled more by night than in daytime, when Mr. Appel declared that he intended to sleep in the sleeping bag he had brought with him but which Mrs. Appel had not permitted him to use because she felt nervous alone, in her teepee.

Mrs. Appel protested against Mr. Appel thus recklessly exposing himself to danger but Mr. Appel was mulish in the matter.

”If, by chance, one _should_ come into camp I would have a good look at him. I may never have another such opportunity.”

”If you want to take your life in your hands, well and good.”

So, after supper, Mr. Appel unrolled his sleeping bag and spread it on a level spot not far from the supply wagon. Then he kissed Mrs. Appel, who turned her cheek to him, and b.u.t.toned himself into the bag.

The talk of bears had made Aunt Lizzie Philbrick so nervous that as an extra precaution she pinned the flap of her tent down securely with a row of safety-pins and Mr. Stott not only slept in more of his clothes than usual but put a pair of bra.s.s knuckles under his pillow.

These bra.s.s knuckles had been presented to Mr. Stott by a grateful client for whom he had obtained damages from a street railway company for injuries received through being ejected from a saloon six months prior to the date upon which he had fallen off the car step.

Bra.s.s knuckles and a convenient length of lead-pipe were favourite weapons with the clientele which gave to the waiting room of Mr. Stott's law office an odour reminiscent of a Wayfarers' Lodging House.

The night was a dark one, so dark in fact that old Mr. Penrose felt some little hesitation when it came bed-time over going off to sleep by himself in the brush where, owing to his unfortunate habit of snoring so loud as to be beyond anything human, they now placed his teepee.

There was not a glimmer of moonlight or starlight to guide him as he went stumbling and cras.h.i.+ng through the brush to his rag residence. His thoughts were not so much of four-footed visitors as of footpads and the ease with which they could attack him and get away with his grandfather's watch which he was wearing.

Out in the open, Mr. Appel was enjoying the novelty tremendously, though he was a little too warm for comfort in his fleece-lined bag. But after the last candle had been extinguished he called to his wife cheerily:

”Are you all right, dearie?”

Mrs. Appel was not to be so easily propitiated and did not answer, so he called again:

”This is great--simply great! I wish you were with me.”

Only Mr. Appel and his Maker knew that he screwed up his cheek and winked at the fabrication.

Sleep came quickly to the tired tourists, and soon there was no sound save the distant tinkle of the bell on one of the horses and the faint rumble of Mr. Penrose's slumbers.

It was eleven o'clock or thereabouts, and the clouds had rifted letting through the starlight, when dark forms began to lumber from the surrounding woods and pad around the camp, sniffing at various objects and breathing heavily.

There were bears of all sizes and ages, ranging from yearlings to grandfathers whose birthdays were lost in antiquity. Mr. Appel, who was a light sleeper and the first to discover them, would have sworn on a monument of Bibles that there were at least fifty of them--the size of mastodons.

Palpitating in his sleeping bag in the midst of them, he may be excused for exaggeration, although, exactly, there were only eight of them.

The cold sweat broke out on Mr. Appel and he thought that surely the thumping of his heart must attract their attention. In such mortal terror as he never had experienced or imagined he quaked while he speculated as to whether the bear that first discovered him would disembowel him with one stroke of his mighty paw, and leave him, or would scrunch his head between his paws and sit down and eat on him?

But once the bears had located the supply-wagon, they went about their business like trained burglars. Standing on their hind legs, they crowded about it, tearing open sacks, scattering food, tossing things. .h.i.ther and thither, jostling each other and grunting when they found something to their liking.

Their grunting and quarrelling finally awakened Hicks and McGonnigle, who started up in their blankets, yelling. Their whoops aroused everybody except old Mr. Penrose, who was sleeping with his deaf ear uppermost and would not have heard a Big Bertha.

Mr. Stott slipped on his bra.s.s knuckles and stood with his head out of the tent opening, adding his shouts to those of Hicks and McGonnigle, who, by now, were hurling such missiles as they could lay their hands on. Instead of having hysterics as might have been expected, Aunt Lizzie Philbrick astonished herself and others by standing out in the open with her petticoat over her nightgown, prepared to give battle with the heel of her slipper to the first bear that attacked her.

It was not until Mr. Hicks got hold of two washbasins and used them as cymbals that the bears paid any attention. But this sound, added to the pandemonium of screaming women, finally frightened them. Then, scattering in all directions, they started back to the shadows.

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