entrance of the tepee was filled by a huge form. The little red eyes
of the grizzly were glaring at them in fury.

For a moment the bear seemed to hesitate. Then he turned towards
Kitsomax. Instantly Dusty Star stepped forward, and gave a short bark
like a coyote. The grizzly turned savagely in his direction. With a
marvelous quickness in one so old, Kitsomax darted out of the tepee.

In thus turning the bear's attention from the old squaw to himself he
was well aware that he had risked his own life. Yet he felt he could not
have done otherwise, since she had willingly taken the same risk in
coming to set him free, instead of escaping with the other squaws while
there was yet time.

Seeing itself balked of one prey, the bear now concentrated his rage
upon the other. He made a furious rush.

If Dusty Star had been a fraction of a second too late, the delay would
have cost him his life; but even as the furry Terror hurled itself upon
him, he made one of his swift wolf-leaps to the other side of a pile of
skins. The grizzly turned like a flash. It was amazing that so huge a
body could move with such terrible ease and quickness. But quick though
the bear was, the boy was quicker. He knew that death was hard upon him.
A false, or undecided movement, and nothing could save him from those
murderous claws. All the muscles of his lithe body were contracted in
preparation for the final rush for life. Before the grizzly could cut
him off, Dusty Star seemed not so much to run, as to _shoot_ himself out
from the lodge.

The big paw missed its mark by a hair's breath--no more. Only one of the
frightful hooked claws touched with its tip the spot where Dusty Star's
buckskin shirt bulged slightly from his back. It rent it as clean as the
slash of a tomahawk, but failed to reach the skin. Dusty Star felt the
slash, and bounded for his life. He could see Kitsomax's stooping form
already half-way towards the forest.

If he had made a straight run now, it was probable that the bear would
have caught him, owing to the extraordinary speed with which a bear can
move over the ground, but as Dusty Star took a zig-zag course all across
the camp, doubling right and left as he darted round the tepees, the
grizzly lost ground.

From the last tepee to the edge of the forest was less than a dozen
yards. Dusty Star took them at a wild run, hearing the snarling growl of
the grizzly as it came wheeling furiously round the last tepee. He swung
him