Next morning in the mud not far from the teepee Yan found the track of a common Cat, and shrewdly guessed that this was the prowler that had been heard and treed by the Dog; probably it was his old friend of the Skunk fight.  The wind was still high, and as Yan pored over the tracks he heard for the first time in broad daylight the appalling screech.  It certainly was loud, though less dreadful than at night, and peering up Yan saw two large limbs that crossed and rubbed each other, when the right puff of wind came.  This was the Banshee that did the wailing that had scared them all—­all but the Dog.  His keener senses, unspoiled by superstition, had rightly judged the awful sound as the harmless scraping of two limbs in the high wind, but the lower, softer noise made by the prowling Cat he had just as truly placed and keenly followed up.

Guy was the only one not convinced.  He clung to his theory of Bears.

Late in the night the two Chiefs were awakened by Guy.  “Say, Sam—­Sam.  Yan—­Yan—­Yan—­Yan, get up; that big Bear is ’round again.  I told you there was a Bear, an’ you wouldn’t believe me.”

There was a loud champing sound outside, and occasionally growls or grumbling.

“There’s surely something there, Sam.  I wish Turk and Caleb were here now.”

The boys opened the door a little and peered out.  There, looming up in the dim starlight, was a huge black animal, picking up scraps of meat and digging up the tins that were buried in the garbage hole.  All doubts were dispelled.  Guy had another triumph, and he would have expressed his feelings to the full but for fear of the monster outside.

“What had we better do?”

“Better not shoot him with arrows.  That’ll only rile him.  Guy, you blow up the coals and get a blaze.”

All was intense excitement now, “Oh, why haven’t we got a gun!”

“Say, Sam, while Sap—­I mean Hawkeye—­makes a blaze, let’s you and me shoot with blunt arrows, if the Bear comes toward the teepee.”  So they arranged themselves, Guy puttering in terror at the fire and begging them not to shoot.

“What’s the good o’ riling him?  It—­it—­it’s croo-oo-el.”

Sam and Yan stood with bows ready and arrows nocked.

Guy was making a failure of the fire, and the Bear began nosing nearer, champing his teeth and grunting.  Now the boys could see the great ears as the monster threw up its head.

“Let’s shoot before he gets any nearer.”  At this Guy promptly abandoned further attempts to make a fire and scrambled up on a cross stick that was high in the teepee for hanging the pot.  He broke out into tears when he saw Sam and Yan actually drawing their bows.

“He’ll come in and eat us, he will.”

But the Bear was coming anyway, and having the two tomahawks ready, the boys let fly.  At once the Bear wheeled and ran off, uttering the loud, unmistakable squeal of an old Pig—­Burns’s own Pig—­for young Burns had again forgotten to put up the bars that crossed his trail from the homestead to the camp.