“You can’t do anything—–­except run in danger, Dick,” the physician called anxiously.

“I am studying this business trying to find out if there isn’t something that I can do,” Prescott replied.

“There isn’t,” Dr. Bentley assured the boy, walking over to him, “and by staying you’re only putting your life in almost certain jeopardy.”

But Prescott shook his head and went on studying the turn of rope around the tree trunk.

“You foolhardy fellow, I wish I had authority to order you away from here,” exclaimed the physician irascible.

“I know you think I’m foolhardy, sir,” Dick answered respectfully, “but, from the way the rope is fraying, this beast is going to be free presently.  I feel that I simply have to find a way to prevent his doing mischief.  We boys can take to trees, but how about the girls?  How about Mrs. Bentley?”

“They can get inside of the wooden houses at need,” urged Dr. Bentley.  “It is hardly likely that even a crazy bull would attack a wooden house.”

“He might charge through our camp, though, and frankly, doctor, we can’t afford to lose that camp,” Prescott argued.

“You other boys get back!” commanded Dr. Bentley, but Dick’s chums came closer.

“Hoo-hoo! hoo-hoo!” sounded a masculine voice from the direction of Dick & Co.’s camp.

“Hoo-hoo!” Dick answered, in his loudest tone.  “Who are you?”

“Hibbert,” came the reply.  “I understand you are bull chasing!”

“Yes.”

“Want any help?”

“Yes; if you’re an expert in handling wild bulls,” Dick shouted back, between his hands.

“I guess that will hold him, for a little while,” chuckled Dave.  “The idea of Hibbert handling wild bulls with those dainty little white hands of his!”

Soon the sound of running steps was heard.  Then on the scene came Hibbert, carrying a second rope that he had found.

“A queer hitch-up you’ve got there,” murmured the dapper little man, as he halted near the group.

“Yes; and the bull is going to get away pretty soon, according to all predictions,” replied Tom Reade.  “Though, perhaps, Mr. Hibbert, you may have an idea that hasn’t occurred to our addled brains.”

“That’s hardly likely,” murmured the young man, as he began to tie a running noose in one end of the rope with an air of preoccupation.  “I don’t know very much about cattle.”

“I suppose not,” Tom nodded.

“The very little that I know about the beasts,” Hibbert went on quietly, “was what I picked up during my college vacations, when my good old Dad sent me west to rough it on a ranch.  I’m not a cowboy at all, you know.  All I know about them I discovered merely by sitting in saddle and watching the cowboys.”

Now Hibbert slipped around to the rear of the bull, which, for the moment, was behaving very quietly.

“Look out!” yelled Prescott suddenly, for Hibbert, slipping in closer, had begun to tease the beast’s left quarter.  Mr. Bull, as though resenting such familiarity with all his force, reared, plunged, snorted.  The rope hitched about the tree seemed likely to snap at any moment.