ir.

"He's getting to his hind legs. That means fight!" breathed
Horace. "Come on, let's run!"

"But he'd overtake us and beat us down with his paws," returned
Larry. "We've got to kill him."

Less time did the action consume than is required to describe it,
and the boys were standing terror stricken when the bear charged
upon them, making vicious lunges at them with his huge paws.

Roused from his fright by the imminence of his peril, Tom raised
his rifle, only to have it knocked from his hands by a swing of one
of the bear's paws.

[Illustration: The rifle was knocked from his hand.]

"Drop down! drop down so I can shoot!" yelled Larry as he saw the
desperate situation in which his brother was placed.

Instantly Tom obeyed, throwing himself to one side as he fell.

But as the younger of the brothers dropped the bear, as though
singling him out for his particular antagonist, also dropped to all
fours, and Larry's shot went over him.

Horace, however, shot lower, and a terrible roar told them that the
bullet had struck home.

In the fury of his pain the bear seemed to think that the boy lying
flat on the rocks was the cause of his suffering, and, with mouth
distended, charged upon him.

In a frenzy lest they might not be able to save Tom, Larry and
Horace both fired.

At the impact of the bullets the bear rose on his hind legs, swung
wildly with his paws at the steel barrels that were pouring the
terribly painful things into him and fell prone, the huge carcass
missing Tom by less than a foot.

CHAPTER XVII

LOST!

From the moment when his brother had cried to him to drop, Tom had
kept his eyes on the bear, and when he saw the beast plunge forward
and realized that it was dead, he leaped to his feet, his pale face
telling of the awful strain under which he had been.

The reaction from their excitement made Larry and Horace tremble
and, for the time, they could only look from their companion to the
carcass of the bear, too unnerved to speak.

Tom was the first to recover from the fright, and he thanked the
others for what they had done.

"Let's not talk about it," interposed Larry. "The thing for us to
do is to get out of here lively. The reverberations from those
shots are echoing yet. The raiders must have heard them, and
they'll know some one is on their trail, so they will either come
back to sec who it is or else hide to waylay us."

Tom and Horace were perfectly willing to giv