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.

“Nope, didn’t worry after you answered my shot, but I was mighty envious of you, for I knew you had got hold of something.  I didn’t believe it was a bear.  Were you scared, Dick?”

“Yes, I was, a heap, but I pulled through,” and Dick told his chum of the thought that braced him up.

Ned tried to speak roughly, but his voice trembled and he looked affectionately at his companion as he said: 

“See here, Dick, boy, you can cut out all that outlaw talk.  The gun business was all bluff and you know it as well as I.”

“You looked pretty white, Neddy, for a fellow who didn’t think he was taking any risk.  But if you’ll tell me now, honest Injun, that you didn’t think there was any danger when you faced that convict and called him a liar, a thief and a coward, why I’ll never speak of it again.  I noticed that your pet outlaw, who said the fellow was a murderer, three deep, didn’t seem to think that you had done anything so very amusing in giving that fellow the lie and all the rest of it.”