Page:Edward Ellis--Alden the Pony Express Rider.djvu/239

 wounds made by the revolver bullets, as if he thought they were splinters which he tried to pluck out.

It was the rifle ball that settled the business. He sagged over on his side, struck and kicked for a few seconds and then the prodigious carcass lay still, for he was as dead as Julius Cæsar.

From the same direction that the bear had come, advanced a Pony Express Rider, with smoking rifle in hand. He had arrived in the nick of time and could not have asked a fairer target than that presented by the brute. The man, however, did not know whom he had saved, until Alden Payne came from behind the boulder and confronted him. Then he reined up and looked wonderingly at the youth.

“Who the mischief are you?” he asked, as Alden appeared.

“A young fellow in need of the help you gave.”

“How comes it you’re on foot and in this fix?”

Alden hastily explained.

“So Dick Lightfoot’s dead, eh? Too bad; where did you leave him?”