s looking down shudderingly into the morass out of
which he had crawled, when he missed his rifle and knew he had got
to get back into the mudhole. It was so deep that he laid a branch
across it to cling to, before venturing in. A big moccasin crawled
from under a root beside the pool of mud as Dick stepped in it and
the boy shut his teeth tight as he forced himself to wallow through
the slimy, snaky mass from which his flesh recoiled.

He was waist-deep in that broth of mud when his feet found the rifle
and he stooped down into it and groped around among roots that felt
like living, squirming reptiles before he recovered the weapon. When
he had scraped the most of the mud off of himself and out of the
rifle it was too dark to follow the trail and Dick walked to a
near-by thicket where he hoped to find better ground for a camp. He
was peering into a dark recess in the thicket when a fierce growl
within a few feet startled him terribly, but told him that he had
found his bear--or another one. Dick was about to run, when a
picture of Ned facing the outlaw formed itself in his mind and after
that the bear couldn't have kicked him out of its path. As the boy's
eyes became accustomed to the gloom he saw the bear lying within six
feet, with jaws half open, and eyes fixed upon him. Dick believed
the bear was dying, since he failed to spring upon him, but he
thought a bullet would make things safer and he raised his rifle. He
pointed the weapon at the animal's head, but it was too dark to see
the sight of the rifle, the brain of the creature was small, and
Dick, remembering that a bear with a sore head is likely to be
cross, dropped the muzzle of his weapon to the fore shoulder of the
beast, and fired. The bear scarcely moved, but its eyes closed and
Dick was prudently waiting before touching it, when he heard the
distant report of a gun and knew that Ned was worried about him. He
fired an answering shot and then, finding a bit of dry ground beside
the body of the bear, decided to eat his supper the next morning and
lay down to sleep with his head on his new bear robe.

At daylight he heard the report of Ned's gun and fired his rifle in
reply. The bear was so heavy that Dick had trouble in handling it
and before he had finished skinning it the report of a gun within
two hundred yards showed that Ned was out hunting for him and had
taken the right course.

"Hope you didn't worry about me," was Dick's greeting as the boys
met