As the bears appeared in the light of the fire, now blazing fiercely and fast climbing from one dry limb to another, the lads saw the Indian raise his rifle to his shoulder and fire.

Instead of taking to their legs, the bears grouped themselves around their fallen mate and snarled savagely up into the tree.

“Oje will get another one in a minute,” Thede ventured, overjoyed at the success of the first shot, “and then we can open fire with our automatics.”

“Holy Moses!” cried Sandy.  “Here we’ve been sitting here watching the panorama with our guns in our pockets!  I guess we don’t know much about hunting bears, when it comes down to cases.”

“Well, it isn’t too late to shoot yet,” Thede declared.

“It’s getting pretty hot here, anyhow,” said Sandy, “and we’ll have to drop in a minute, whether we shoot or not.  This old tree seems to be as dry as tinder!”

“Yes,” Thede agreed, “I guess you started something when you made such good use of that one match.”

The boys moved about on the limb in order to get at their automatics.  They noted then, for the first time, that the perch upon which they rested was burning close to the trunk.  They called out to each other, almost simultaneously, to shift to the trunk of the tree.

But it was too late.  They felt themselves swinging through, the air, and the next moment there was such a mixture of boy and bear at the bottom of the tree as has rarely been seen in the British Territories.

Both boys landed squarely on the back of one of the animals.  Of course, they rolled to the ground instantly and grabbed for their automatics, but their movements were no quicker than those of the astonished bear.

“Woof!” he said.  “Woof!”

Translated into boy-talk, this read “Good-night!” and a second later they heard both bears tramping through the forest as if pursued by a pack of hounds.

“What do you know about that?” demanded Tommy.

Without replying, Thede scrambled to his feet and dashed into the thicket where he had left the fish.  He returned in a moment with a woeful face which set his chum into roars of laughter.

“They ate our fish!” he said,

“What’d you think they’d do with them?” demanded Sandy.  “Did you think they’d put ’em in cold storage and keep ’em for next summer?”

“What I’m sobbing about,” Thede went on, “is that the bears certainly made a monkey of me.  They weren’t after us.  They were after the fish!”

“Well, they got the fish, didn’t they?” asked Sandy.

“And we might have been on our way while they were devouring them!” wailed Thede.

The tree was now virtually a pillar of fire, and the boys moved out from under it.  They found the Indian standing, stolid and indifferent, just out of the circle of light.

“Just think of all that funny thing happening and he never seeing any humor in it!” exclaimed Sandy.